The year 2007 has proven to be an interesting one, seeing a lot of up’s and down’s for Iaido in Ireland. The biggest problem that Iaido in Ireland is facing is the amount of students actually attending classes. After a very good start in spring we faced the typical summer holiday breakdowns but unfortunately have not really recovered since. This leaves us in the unique situation that we have sometimes more teachers then students attending the class. Having still in mind the screams of Iaidoka missing instructors in 2006 and their willingness to go wherever a teacher would be, this seems to have been more lip service then reality. Is it really all about the location, the winter and the time as people say? I would like to encourage people to let us know why they can not make it to training as we for sure will continue to grow and support Iaido in Ireland.

As you might be aware, one of the big events coming next year is the travel from two of the IAI teachers to Japan in April to attend the World Botoku Sai of the DNBK (Dai Nippon Butoku Kai) in Kyoto. We will keep you posted on this event and what is happening to this first ever Irish delegation to an international DNBK event. Our two teachers are looking forward to it and are getting more and more excited.

Several other events, especially seminars with senior instructors, will be planned in January, as well as the Annual General Meeting will be held on the last Monday in January, the 28th January 2008. Invitations to the AGM will be issued by email soon to all members. If you have not received an invitation by the 31st Decembers 2007, please contact Björn (bjoern @ iaido.ie) by mail.

The website itself has proven to be our best information pool and we try hard to make it useful and provide insights on Iaido. Therefore we have changed the Articles section to the official iaido.ie Blog. We would like to encourage Iaidoka all over the world to send us their thoughts on Iaido and martial arts to discuss and share ideas. So if you have an article or just some thoughts you want to share, let us know and we will be happy to allow you to post on our iaido.ie Blog.

Stay tuned for more to come in 2008, but now is the time to thank all the friends, teachers and students for their help and support in 2007. The Iaido Association of Ireland and iaido.ie would like to wish you all a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year 2008.

On behalf of the IAI and iaido.ie

Björn
-- iaido.ie Editor --