Olivier Gaurin is one of the most well-known French Aikido practitioners. His atypical path and his ease with words have made him one of the prominent voices of our martial art in France. Olivier Gaurin has been living in Japan for many years and he got the chance to practice with some of the greatest masters such as Seigo Yamaguchi and Kisshomaru Ueshiba Sensei. He speaks Japanese fluently and has a deep understanding of the Japanese culture, which he enthusiastically shares with other practitioners through a series of books that he wrote about the practice of Aikido. I met with Olivier Gaurin on a summer evening at his Tokyo apartment and we discussed during several hours about his martial journey and his views on Aikido while sharing a homemade pizza cooked by the "Captain" himself.

Eight months have passed since March 11th 2011 and the Great Tohoku Earthquake which triggered a tsunami that devastated the eastern coast of Japan and provoked the worst nuclear incident since Chernobyl. The initial fears and the foreign media frenzy now over, one could now think that all is back to normal in Japan. From inside Japan however, things are still far from normal, even for those who were fortunate enough to live several hundreds of kilometres away from Fukushima and its crippled nuclear power plant. One of the main problems that all people have to face is to ensure their family’s safety as regards to the food that they consume. While the entire population of Japan is concerned, foreigners are a lot more susceptible than any other as they might not necessarily be able to access or understand crucial information regarding to the provenance and relative safety of the food that they purchase.

Thanks to the impressive investigative work carried out by Stanley Pranin, the influence of Daito-ryu Aiki-jujutsu in the development of Aikido is now fairly well know and understood. This has led some Aikido practitioners to focus their attention towards learning the Daito-ryu techniques in order to complete what they might regard as a certain lack in nowadays' Aikido teaching. Among these, Olivier Gaurin, a long time student at the Aikikai Hombu Dojo and author of several books on Aikido decided to continue in Mr Pranin's footsteps, to learn the ancient techniques and to promote them to the Aikido public. I had been aware of Daito-ryu Aiki-jujutsu for many years through the work of Stanley Pranin but it is Olivier Gaurin who introduced me to the Daito-ryu teachers of the Takumakai school and it wasn't long before we both decided to document our experience, which eventually came under the form of the following documentary.

The Tokyo Koenji Awaodori is one of the largest Awaodori summer dance festivals and it is usually held on the last Saturday and Sunday of the month of August. Each year, almost 200 groups (ren, 連) gathering over 10,000 dancers perform in the streets of Koenji the traditional Awa dance to the sound of flutes, drums and bells. The performers travel through nine routes departing from Koenji JR Train Station.

Besides being the fifth most powerful earthquake in the world overall since modern record-keeping began in 1900 with its magnitude of 9.0, the undersea megathrust earthquake that hit the Pacific coast of Tohoku in Japan on Friday 11th March 2011 is by far the most well documented in history. The data is still coming in but the body of evidence that is already available has allowed the making of very interesting documentaries. I would like to present two of these that were made respectively by the BBC and Channel 4. I use them regularly in my teaching of earth dynamic and thought they might be of interest to you.

Enoshima is a small island off the eastern coast of Japan in the Sagami Bay, not far from the city of Kamakura in the Kanagawa prefecture. The island has a circumference of about four kilometres and it is linked to the main land by the 600m Enosima-ohashi Bridge which runs parallel to the Katagase-gawa River. From Kamakura, the Enoshima Dentetsu train bound westwards for Fujisawa will bring you to Katase-Enoshima station in less than half an hour while allowing you to enjoy the coastal scenery at a relatively measured pace. From Katase-Enoshima station, you will just have to walk south-west for a few minutes and cross the Enosima-ohashi Bridge.

Michel Erb is an exemplary practitioner. He belongs to a generation of Aikidokas that were instrumental in getting our art through the 21st century. He constantly travels the roads of France, Switzerland and Germany through the numerous seminars that he teaches and he is invariably present whenever his Master, Christian Tissier Shihan travels through Europe. Michel accepted to share with us his vision of Aikido and of the techniques that he forged in the crucible of the teaching of Christian Tissier.