In the compound of the Kyoto Botanical Garden, there is a place halfway up the hill where it is said that…Yoshitsune Minamoto trained. It forms a basin and is a perfect spot for outdoor Aikido training. About 50 yards away, there was a small house with about three rooms which was…the house where the famous Confucian scholar Razan Hayashi Sensei was born in the Edo period. Ueshiba Sensei rented that house and lived and trained there for 20 days with…Rinjiro Shirata…Tenryu…and myself….
….after cleaning the house, Ueshiba Sensei admonished us…”We are going to lead an ascetic life…we will eat meals consisting of one kind of soup and a serving of fish or vegetables and rice. We are also going to train at night. ……During the 20-day period of training….we got up at five in the morning, swung our bokken…five hundred times, and then practiced how to move our bodies….Ueshiba Sensei showed us how to move and told us to practice our skills and bring our minds into oneness with nature…
– – – Gozo Shioda Shihan, Aikido Shinsei – Aiki News translation – issue 79, p. 58; issue 80, p. 65