I thought I would never take part on a nanbudo seminar in Slovenia again. But I did.

After I got the tickets for the flights and managed to work most of the hours in, the journey started from the Helsinki-Vantaa airport. The six hours in Prague while waiting for the next flight gave me a good opportunity to relax from the job related issues and to focus my mind on the essence of nanbudo.

The name of the seminar, Ljubljana Open, was somewhat ironic, specially as there were rumors of the other club in town resiging from WNF and quit practising nanbudo. Indeed it was not just a rumour, the locals knew.

The fee of the seminar was somehow managed to keep under the stress hold of 10 EUR per hour of training. Even thought one can never measure the quality of a seminar in money, the prices still have an effect on the participation quite often.

The first training of the seminar in Friday consisted of Nanbu sotai-, Nanbu keiraku taiso- _and Nanbu shodan_-drills. What was common, that in this time all techniques were performed with the similar tempo and speed, thus making them more smooth. Friday night moved on to the dinner from which nearly all presentatives of each nationality continued to the billiard house close by.

The technical content of Saturday and Sunday was covering remarkable wide area, from soft to hard and from slow to fast, thus reflecting the essence of nanbudo. Even some exercises were done which have not been seen since the summer seminar in Spain 2001.

There was one other thing to be noted on this seminar. The average age of the participants was lower than usual. For example the only shihan level participant, Leo Rafolt from Croatia is just under thirty. At leat the following nationalities were presented: Croatia, England, Finland, France, Japan, Norway and Slovenia.

I wish the good blood will continue flowing.

Jukka Paasonen, 3 dan