At the turn of July and August, we headed to Budapest for the five-day Ishido Sensei – Summer Seminar 2026, dedicated to jodo and iaido. This year, the seminar brought together a total of 215 practitioners from more than 20 countries around the world, with a large Japanese delegation also taking part.
The first two and a half days were dedicated to jodo. On the very first day, all ZNKR jodo kata were covered under the guidance of Otake sensei. During the rest of the seminar, there was time for free practice, so everyone could choose what they wanted to work on. Adriana and Marian used this time mainly to practice the kata they were preparing for the competition and then focused on preparing for their examinations, which are coming up in a month. During the competition, both of them performed three koryu kata and achieved a fantastic 2nd place. It was a great experience and also a good opportunity to practice the kata in a slightly different environment than during regular training.
After jodo came the iaido part of the seminar. We already knew many of the updates to the ZNKR kata from the previous seminar in Graz, where they had been presented to us by Nihei Sensei and Sasamura Sensei. This meant that in Budapest we could focus mainly on practicing the new changes and incorporating them directly into the individual kata under the guidance of the Japanese instructors. In addition to ZNKR Seitei, there was also time for koryu practice. However, no official Tamiya ryu instructor was present at the seminar, so our small group was led by our own Marian sensei, who was the highest-ranked member among us. We focused mainly on Inazuma kata and on other kata that individual candidates were preparing for their upcoming examinations and the competition.
There was also an iaido team competition, with more than 40 teams randomly formed according to technical grades. Marian and his team, consisting of practitioners from Tamiya ryu, Suio ryu, and Muso shinden ryu, made it all the way to the finals, where they achieved 2nd place.
Marian’s calm and focused performance, together with his selection of three kata from the Chuden series, also caught the attention of the Japanese delegation, and he received very positive feedback from them. For our small Tamiya ryu group, it was really nice to see that although there were only six of us among more than 200 participants, we were still able to represent our school well.
The iaido part of the seminar concluded with examinations, where Tomáš successfully achieved his 2nd Dan. Congratulations!
Apart from the training itself, the seminar was also a great opportunity to meet people from many different countries, exchange experiences, and learn something new. Five days of intensive training, a very hot gym, plenty of kata, and, of course, a bit of competition adrenaline—that pretty much sums up our Budapest seminar.
A big thank you goes to the organizers for all their work in preparing the event and for making sure everything ran smoothly throughout the seminar. And, of course, many thanks to all the teachers for their time, patience, and valuable advice. We came back from Budapest with tired bodies, a few sore muscles, but also plenty of new knowledge, experiences, and motivation for our next training sessions.
