Yesterday I passed my 7th kyu exam in KJJR jujutsu.

This is the first time my direct sensei was not present during the exam. He is currently temporarily unable to attend class, and in order for us not to be held back for an unknown duration, the chief sensei decided that he'd take the exam now so that we could move on.

The exam itself was fairly short. The 7th kyu jujutsu is one of the smallest kyu levels. Especially considering that half of the techniques were already covered during the 7th kyu ninpo. For jujutsu, we had to perform omote and ura kote gyaku, omote and ura take ori, and karami dori. The exam went well (we trained a lot for it), though the 'ground' part of ura take ori still needs some more work in order to get it right every time.

The same was true for ura kote gyaku after the ninpo exam a couple of months ago. It is a difficult enough lock to learn. We performed it well enough on the 7th kyu ninpo exam, but after the exam we had to keep improving it, because an exam is never the end of something. It means that you can do it and that you understand it. After that, you need to keep practicing until you have mastered it. My ura kote gyaku has improved significantly since the ninpo exam, to the point where I can now lock it every time, from practically every position.

On a related note, I have officially been made sempai of our dojo by the chief sensei during the yearly general meeting a couple of weeks ago. I've been helping teach class and take care of things for quite a while now, kind of like an 'under cover sempai'. Now that our sensei is currently indisposed, the sempai and I were teaching every other class (so that we both could train at least once per week). Because of that, and because having only 1 official 'representative' could be problematic, the chief sensei decided to have 2 sempai, even though this is a bit unusual.

While I am honored, it doesn't make a big practical difference to me. I was doing the job anyway. But is nice that the work was recognized, and it should help take away some confusion for the newer members.

Next, we have to get some extra training with the chief sensei so that we can get started with the ninpo 6th kyu material.