Culture of Aikido

Last 2 trainings we trained with one of Sempais, without Sensei. Today our training was started with Sempais, and every one thought that we will see our Sensei next training. But he came after we made limbering-up. We were very glad about it.
Hi entered tatami and say to us – “I wasn’t in dojo for 4 days and look at tatami!”. We were kind of surprised to see a lot of holes in it… We didn’t pay a lot of attention about it…
Sensei – “Why the tatami is broken, and you start training? Was it impossible to fix tatami? Why you, Sempais, didn’t fix tatami? Or you, others? Did you think that someone can have an injure, like a broken leg, for example.
Where is your Aikido? Do you really think that Aikido is you techniques and that’s all? No! Aikido is your culture, first of all! Without culture you can’t do any technique. Remember that, please.”. I felt a lot of shame in this moment. I ask myself: “Really, why didn’t I fix the tatami? It is not very difficult; I just need some threads, needles and glue. That’s all…”.
I knew why. Because it will be kind of unusual that someone is fixing (or cleaning) tatami before training, or after one. Maybe someone would laugh at me, or looked at me like “Look at this guy – Is he crazy?”. And I was kind of scared about it. Shame, shame, shame…
I don’t know what the others were thinking about, but I didn’t have any thought like: “Hey, guys! What a hell is going on? We pay for our studies. And someone else should clean and fix tatami! Not us!”. It’s only positive moment in this situation – I recognize my guilt.
After that Sensei ask someone to bring tools, to fix tatami and start training. We fixed it and the training was continued.
When the training was over, I came to Sensei and ask him like: “For the 5 month I study, you show us only techniques, and there was no culture. Why do you ask us to be cultural?”. And he told me: “When you are doing some technique, you are thinking, even if you do the same technique for hundreds times. So this way you are developing and became more cultural. Now you can’t understand it, but you will later. We will talk about it again, after some time”.

It was very good training, because I have very important lesson.