The importance of learning a language

I recently had the honour of passing my Aikido 3rd Dan with Yamashima Shihan. It was a great experience after some years of a lot of training with different teachers and following many seminars. 

An exam is an exhibition of your knowlegde for which you have to prepare many things : practice and perfectionate your technique, choose a good uke, get ready physically and mentally and resist intensive training.  However, there is another important matter that helped me for my exam : understanding Japanese !

My Japanese level is not very high, but I was able to understand almost everything sensei asked. I am fully aware that the result would have been completely different if I couldn’t understand what the examinator required. I would have been much more nervous and felt umprepared. However, knowing a bit of Japanese, I could focus on the execution regardless on the language the instructions were given.

Thanks to my Japanese lessons I enjoyed the seminar and happily passed my exam !