I received an entrance ticket to kendo heaven: I was admitted to practice in a dojo full of really strong kenshi, most of them 7-dan. My hanshi 8-dan sensei comes once per week; two other 8-dan sensei attend regularly. I get to line up and practice with all of them.

My ticket is time-limited, because so is my stay in Japan. This will be my longest stay in Japan in over 20 years. It's not an easy thing for me to arrange, given work and family commitments, so I'm determined to make the most of this incredible privilege. Whenever the dojo is open for practice, I am there, six intense training sessions per week. I have not missed a single one for the past six weeks. This is my number one priority during my short stay: making the most of this unique opportunity to improve my kendo. I don't know how long it will be before I'll be able to be back for this long.

I finally passed 4-dan in 2019, 14 years after 3-dan, with about ten failed attemps in between, both in Japan and in England (at some point I stopped counting). I first challenged 5-dan in 2023, in London, after the prescribed four years since passing 4-dan. I failed. Shortly after, I came to Japan to visit my sensei for a week. Back in England, I took the exam again, but failed once more. This time, during my extended stay in Japan, I would have one single chance to take the exam in Tokyo.

To be honest, I was not as disappointed as one might think about my previous 5-dan failures. After failing 4-dan so many times, not passing the exam was not such a big deal. And, on watching the videos of my performance, I could see that I was not yet doing the kendo I wanted to do. I was not of 5-dan level yet. I didn't want a 5-dan certificate on my wall if higher level kenshi in the dojo would not recognise me as 5-dan when crossing swords with me.

So my main goal for this extended stay was, and has always been from the start, to improve my kendo. I genuinely cared much more about cleaning up my kendo and bringing it up a few notches than about passing this exam, which I was confident would one day happen naturally if I did the former. I shared this thought with my seniors in the dojo as they all supported me for passing the exam. Of course it would be hypocritical to pretend I did not care about the result of the exam. Of course I would have loved to receive 5-dan, and in Tokyo; but really, I cared more about becoming a stronger kenshi, something I felt I could only do here, in this place and time. That's why I attended every single training, and trained hard till time ran out in every session. I could not afford to waste this privilege.

I think I was initially looked at with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion. I am a gaijin, I can't speak, and I wear a funny zekken that looks like a pun in Japanese (ken-bashi, till the penny drops that it means Cam-bridge, half phonetically and half semantically). Sensei introduced me to the other members and said I was a professor at Cambridge, which sounded impressive till people saw how poor my kendo was, compared to everyone else's. Every one of my practice partners just utterly destroyed me in every keiko. Despite doing my best, I could not win the centre or place a single ippon against anyone, young or old, male or female. But I kept showing up, day after day. I think this gradually earned me a bit of respect, despite my ineptitude.

Sensei, who lives rather far and usually practices in another dojo closer to his home in central Tokyo, would only come on Mondays. From him I would get one piece of feedback per week, to digest and work on for the rest of the week. The first week, the feedback was that I was putting too much weight on my front foot. The second week, that I was not keeping a strong connection with my opponent after the cut. The third week, that I needed a lot more uchikomi practice, rather than just ji-geiko against people I was no match for anyway. And so forth. One nugget per week. The rest of the time I would practice with the locals. I had imagined that I would get a lot more instruction from Sensei; instead, our interactions were very brief, and he started to be rather more strict and less hand-holding with me than he had been in the past, even just last year. Somehow I read it as a good sign.

One of the seniors, Hirai sensei, soon took me under his wing and started coaching me session by session. First, by overwhelmingly defeating every one of my attacks. Each one of my attempts at cutting his men earned me a hard kaeshi-do, debana-kote or just simply a straighter men that put my own out of business. All the while pointing out the flaws in my footwork, in my distance, in my swing, in the way I turned around, in the way I tied my men-himo or tare-himo, in the way I wore my hakama and so forth. He latched on to the fact that I was going for 5-dan in mid-February and took it on himself to clean me up for that. He gave me a really hard time but I could see that he really cared. I am immensely grateful to him for his patience and insistence and honesty despite my poor results. The level of my kendo is what it is, that is to say not great, and my Japanese is even worse, which made tuition difficult to say the least, but I feel at least I rewarded him with persistence and dedication. I kept getting whacked and not understanding his verbal instructions but I did not give up.

He would tell me to do something. I would typically not understand, but I tried to copy his example. I'd get whacked. I'd try to figure out if his example was to show me what I needed to do or what I needed to stop doing. I'd get whacked. Once I thought I got some idea of what he wanted me to do, I'd try it and get whacked because I wasn't actually doing it. Once I was pretty sure I knew what he wanted me to do, I'd do it, and I'd get whacked, as proof that (much as I thought I was) I wasn't actually doing it well enough for it to work. I'd keep going, and he wouldn't cut me any slack. Yes, the school of hard knocks. And he'd give me some extended explanation, of which I understood perhaps 10 or 20%, cursing my incompetence in Japanese.

I have always regretted my linguistic incompetence in Japanese. I am fluent in three languages, which I acquired when I was much younger, but basic fluency in this fourth one has been eluding me for over 20 years. It has been obvious to me for a long time that my kendo would improve at a much faster rate if I could actually have a conversation in Japanese with my sensei, or with the many other sensei and sempai who are kind enough to care about my progress. I have tried many times to take a course or another, including a year ago in preparation for this trip, but I have not managed to lock in enough daily practice to get to a useful level. That's one of my failures and I'm paying the price for it now. This experience could be so much more rewarding and instructive if I were fluent in Japanese.

On the other hand, Sensei often repeats that "I think too much". When I sent him a video of my failed 5-dan, hoping for some comments, he was reluctant to do so. He responded that I should not try to understand kendo through my brain, but through practicing with my body. And so, even though on my last one-week visit I took notes after every daily practice with him, this time I explicitly decided not to take any notes about my kendo. I would just turn up in the dojo and practice. In the back of my mind I knew I would slightly regret it later, because it would be nice to have a journal of my progress through this unique experience. But my top level goal was to use this exclusive ticket to heaven to improve my kendo, and if Toyomura Sensei told me not to overthink it then I'd just follow his advice, switch off my brain and learn with my body. Even if it meant no written record of my progress. If I got the privilege of being accepted as his student, it would be a waste not to follow his advice. Who, better than him, knows what is best for me?

Anyway, I am digressing more than I should. Let me get back on track.

The personal tuition from Hirai sensei progressively uncovered many flaws in my kendo that had been nagging me for over 20 years but that I had never managed to straighten out. Distance, footwork, even basic waza. He started to teach me how to cut do, because my swing for do was too big. I made a little progress but after a while he assessed that my do was too poor for 5-dan and I should leave it aside. "We'll work on your do after the exam", he basically told me. "Your men is OK, but now we need to work on your kote." The rationale being (as far as I understood it) that to pass 4-dan it's OK to do just men (as I had done in 2019), but for 5-dan the candidate must demonstrate the ability to create an opportunity and then respond appropriately depending on the response of the opponent. Therefore at least two alternative waza are necessary. And, for me, they would be men and kote.

So we worked tirelessly on that, and on the strategies to elicit a response, and on the ways to react to that response. All very basic stuff when described like this, but really hard to actually pull off in practice against an opponent who also wants to win the fight. I'd try follow his instructions, and I'd get whacked. Very occasionally, he'd say "good!". But then the next time I'd do what I thought was exactly the same, and get whacked. To him, it was totally different. I was raising my arms! (Really? Was I??, I wondered.) I was at a loss to understand what I had done differently from the previous time. Other times, I could notice some difference, it's just that I couldn't do what I understood I was supposed to do. Anyway, I kept at it. Some of the times he'd just offer me a chance, to see if I took it. Some of the times I did, and he'd praise me for it. But when we did ji-geiko for real, I never stood a chance. Did it only ever work because he let me hit him?

Of course I also practiced with many other kenshi, all of whom felt immensely superior (mostly because they were). However, as the weeks went by, occasionally I'd find out that not everyone else was 7-dan, and that once in a while I was able to place a good cut on someone. Occasionally my cut was straight enough that, even though I was not able to cut my senior, he'd congratulate me for it afterwards. Piece by piece, I was slowly making more progress. More people started offering me advice as I did keiko with them. Sometimes contradictory advice, and I had to work out what to do with it. Some other times the same thing I've been told by all my sempai and sensei since I started kendo, and which obvioulsy I still haven't fixed, such as "chikara nuite!" (meaning literally, "leave out the strength", in other words "relax").

The day of the exam came (yesterday, as I write). My sempai, Shimokado sensei, looked after me from start to end like an older brother, doing the application paperwork for me, paying the fee, helping me fill in the written test and correcting my answers, meeting me at the station to go to the Budokan together, guiding me through the last warm-up, even going so far as bringing his own bokuto to my exam "just in case I had some trouble with my own". His last bits of 7-dan advice before the exam included "communicate with your opponent through the kensen before launching into an attack: hello, good morning, how are you?", "wake up the judges with your kiai" and "don't watch too many other tachiai before yours or you'll start overthinking". Anyway, I felt he really had my back. I didn't know if my kendo was good enough for 5-dan level, but I could feel for sure that I was much better prepared than the other two times, and also that I had a better understanding of what was required of me. I still cared more about improving my kendo than about passing the exam, but with so many people having lovingly invested so much in my success, I felt I also owed it to them to bring home the goods.

As I stepped into the shiaijo, I walked proudly towards my starting position and felt confident. I had earned the right to be there, in front of the six judges. I had worked a lot on my chakuso, which was in good order, and on my kamae and my reigi, which I thought had both improved. I had been drilled intensively on the importance of these formal aspects. As we got up from sonkyo, I stood tall and proud. I let my opponent kiai and then I let out my own much louder and longer kiai. I felt I was on top, and that others around also thought so. We probed each other for several seconds: "Hello? How are you?", as Shimokado sensei had just told me. I felt I was more threatening, more badass, and it felt good. But the actual cuts didn't go so well. I think I held my ground, and kept a decent form, but I wasn't really proud of any of my attacks. On the other hand, I didn't feel the opponent scored any good cut on me either. Of the two, I felt I had been slightly dominant, but maybe neither of us had shown a good enough cut to pass. When the fight was stopped, I was surprised and felt it was much too early. I was expecting 90 seconds, instead it was only 60. I felt I had barely done anything. Anyway, we stepped back to our starting positions and went in sonkyo. An ancient pain in my right knee made me falter and almost fall over, but fortunately I didn't. I stood back up, kept my composure and walked to the other side of the shiaijo, strong and dignified. My other opponent was much shorter than me, which gave me a psychological advantage. I felt I overwhelmed this one too with my kiai. In the second fight I felt at least a couple of my attacks were beautiful, including both a men or two and a debana-kote, and fortunately the kote had been on the side facing the judges. This second fight, too, was over quickly (obviously) but now I expected it, and felt I got my money's worth out of those sixty seconds. I was happier with the second fight.

On the whole, as I walked back to the spectators' seats to my sempai, I had mixed feelings. I had certainly done much better than in my previous two failed exams, but on the other hand I wasn't as proud of my kendo as I had been when I passed 4-dan, and I felt I had not performed as well as my normal standard in the dojo. Shimokado sensei also noted that the first fight had not been as good as the second, but on the whole he seemed satisfied. We waited for the sheets with the numbers to be put up and... yes! I had passed the shinai part of the exam! To me, it was all downhill from there. My sempai cautioned me against being overconfident but honestly I could not imagine failing the exam on the Nihon Kendo Kata, which I love. I got the shidachi role, which allowed me to demonstrate both tachi and kodachi. I walked in very confidently and performed well, if I may say so myself, safe in the feeling that, by then, I had essentially already been promoted. Indeed I then passed.

I hate clichés and worn-out phrases but the old saying that "it takes a village to raise a child" rings very true. Many people contributed to my achieving this result and I could never have received 5th dan without their support. Toyomura sensei, it goes without saying, has been my North Star and my inspiration, the teacher I'll follow anywhere. My sempai Azamat, without whom I would have never even met our common Sensei, has been immensely influential in my kendo path: without listing all the previous ones, as for this latest step, without him I would have never even considered challenging 5-dan in 2023, as I would have discounted the lost coronavirus years as time during which I had not practiced in the dojo, and so I would have waited to clock up four "real" years of practice before even applying. Whereas he spurred me to apply as soon as the regulations allowed and supported me every step of the way, even on the morning of the exam with an encouraging email from many time zones away. I am forever grateful to him, and I was proud to be wearing his beautiful bogu at the exam. Shimokado sensei, who took care of me at every step in small and big things, and has been my primary interface to Toyomura sensei. Hirai sensei who taught me patiently and relentlessly, session after session, during this intense training period that is fortunately not over yet. Kurita sensei, who re-taught me the kata in depth and kept a watchful eye on my progress. Miyakoda sensei, who runs the dojo and welcomed me generously, always ready to help and accommodate. And every member of the dojo who allowed me to practice with them and be inspired by them, particularly Kato san (who modestly does not allow me to call her sensei, despite her 7-dan). And I am leaving out many others who supported me, from my wife and daughter who agreed for us to move to Japan, to all my other sword friends elsewhere, particularly Hoshi sensei and Suzuki sensei and the members of the Genbukai dojo who have broadened my kendo mind through exposure to the Hokushin Itto Ryu.

And, certainly not least, my beloved Naganuma sensei, wherever his spirit may be now, whom I hope is rejoicing about this success that he hoped for and predicted, shortly before passing away and morally handing me over to Toyomura sensei, that bittersweet and moving afternoon in 2019.

Now back to work. It's been less than 24 hours but I've already been told, by several of my seniors independently, that yesterday was the day to celebrate but that from today I must work diligently towards becoming 6-dan in 5 years. I can't wait to get back to the dojo for another hard training tomorrow morning. And another one tomorrow evening.

I know the Cambridge members, new and old, have their own upcoming challenges very soon. My best wishes to all of you. Keep training hard. If you keep showing up at every training, and following your North Star, you will eventually get results. Go for it.

I failed 5th dan twice. Then I went to kendo heaven. And passed.

What will you write today?