It has been long time since my last visit to Oslo Karate Club. Even though I worker during the daytime I was working at the local branch office of my company here in Oslo, the whole week was surprisingly fulfilling.

Majority of the Oslo Karate Club members whom I had previously made acquitance with had now moved to another towns or cities, started working or had even quit training. Spite missing the old timers from 2001-2004, there were no problems in getting to know the new promising faces. Nanbudo is one big family.

During this year the hosting club turned 40 years of age, thus being one of the oldest karate clubs in Norway. The oldest club is just few months older than this club. At the dinner held in the Saturday night, several former presidents of the club gave a speech and some insight of the times they were heading the club. The opening speech was held in several languages and as the time for dessert arrived, Nanbu doshusoke cut it with a short sword.

The amount of trainings per night was three hours as most of the foreign participants took part in all the trainings meant for adults. Additionally the adventurous threesome (Kalle from Turku, Matej from Ljubljana and undersigned from Helsinki) was training together whenever they got a change. As I have had some kind of a teacher relation to these two, I was very proud to see that they both have gained plenty of progress. Currently both of them are holding the first grade of entering the school (shodan).

During the week, the emphasis was on Nanbu sotai _throws and _Nanbu kata sequences done in slow motion, in order to complete each technique correctly. Once the lines of movements per technique are grasped, the speed and power can be introduced back in the drill.

Some of the nights had and additional training solely for a kata called Shin Tajima. It is so called rewrite of the older _Tajima _kata.

The usual complications and stress in the travelling back and forth to the seminar was not present at this time, probably due to the ease travelling to place well known.

Jukka Paasonen, 3 dan