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Hey guys!

I attended a grading in Kobe yesterday. It was a completely different experience to any other grading I've attended in Australia, so I thought I'd share it with you guys.

First, the sheer number of people there was overwhelming. There were 1200 people attempting to grade to shodan, nidan and sandan. 800 people were going for shodan alone, and most of them were junior high school students. The nidan candidates all seemed to be in third year junior high or in senior high school. The sandan candidates all seemed to be in their 20s, with a few who looked school aged. I made friends with a few nidan candidates who all RAN over to me after they'd finished a part of their grading to tell me how they went. They were really sweet.

The day began with registration. There were tables set up all over the gym for registration, separated by gender and birth date. All candidates reveived a sticker with their number to stick to their tare. My students from my town were somewhere in the 700s. eek There were probably about sixty people going for sandan, and I was number 14.

The shodan jigeiko was first, so they were all organised into rows by number. Everyone graded in groups of 4, and you sparred against those with numbers before and after you, unless you were the first in a group of four, in which case you sparred with the number after you and then the last person in the group. There were four grading panels, so four groups could go for their grade at a time. I think they started at around 10:00. The girls went first, followed by the boys, followed by the nidan girls, and so on. The girls results were posted on boards at the back of the gym about half way through the boys grading. The sandan girls didn't get to go until about 2:15, so that tells you how long it took!

After the sandan gradings finished, they moved straight into the shodan kata.The gading panels got a short break here, the first I'd seen them take all day. There were five kata pairs to each of the four grading panels. In the kata section of a grading, if you make a mistake you can put up your hand and ask to do it again. I had never really seen this happen in Australia, but I saw it happen a lot here, even for the shodan grading where you only need to know the first three kata.

After the kata gradings finished, there was a short break while they tallied the results. Then it was time for the written section of the grading. I don't know how this works in other countries, but in Australia you choose between two grading questions and write up your answer beforehand and hand it in on the day if you pass the kata section. Not so in Hyogo prefecture! There are 4 questions you know in advance, and they choose two of those questions and you get 30 minutes to answer them at the end of the day. The first question is a passage with blanks, and you have to fill in the blanks using words from a list at the bottom. The second question is a short answer. After you finish your written exam, you take it to the back of the gym and hand it in, along with your money for your grading. After all that is done, you have a nervous wait while the grading panels read all the exams and mark them. If they call out your number in this period, you've probably failed the written section and they take you to the back of the hall to get your money back.

FINALLY, they told us that whoever was still sitting in the hall had passed! I was one of the 50ish percent who had passed the sandan grading. I don't know the percentages of the other grades.

So there you have it! I couldn't believe the number of people who were there. Some people I spoke to during the day said that yesterday was especially big, even for a Kobe grading. Gradings in Kobe are notoriously strict, so I was especially glad to have passed. I slept well last night, believe me!

Thanks for reading if you got all the way through this post. Sorry for the wall of text. I applaud your efforts! sweatdrop

It was a little bit intimidating. Everyone seemed to do a double-take when they realised I was foreign, and when I was doing the written exam (in Japanese, EEK) the grading panel for sandan seemed more amused than anything. The high school girls were so cute, though! Seriously, when we found out the kata results they bolted over to me to tell me the good news.

Man, I honestly can't even remember my Ikkyu grading... having a seventh dan there must have been intimidating, though! Isn't jigeiko with seventh and eighth dan absolutely awesome? I go to the dojo in the city sometimes and am lucky enough to train with an 82 year-old eighth dan. He's incredibly scary, but it's great to watch him. He barely seems to move at all.

ohohoh then you want to meet my sensei. ^-^ he's a 6th dan and only 35 (the only reason he's not ranked higher is because he's not old enough XD)