Kata and randori
I remember Nick once saying something about how, in aikido, we start with kata and end up in randori, whereas in judo we start with randori and end up in kata. Now, I could TOTALLY be butchering that thought, but all I can recall is this basic idea. Which is why I'm posting... Anyone have any clarification on the matter, or care to elaborate? What does it mean? Am I even remembering correctly?
I'll take a crack at it, but this is my interpretation.
In the old days, years ago, before KiHara we taught everything in Aikido as a kata system. Each rank learned a prescribed set of techniques. At some point we tried to learn hand randori and struggled, typically for a long while.
In Judo, we have always done things as randori. Kata is largely an afterthought, typically learned to where it's passable for promotion. It typically isn't hard for Judo guys (and gals) to go from a chaotic condition of randori into the single-throw approach of kata.
Back around January of 2000, we started working on KiHara. As I recall, and I may be wrong, Karl recognized this fundamental difference. KiHara works in a largely randori format where things are strung together, rather than the kata approach of one thing at a time. Aikidoka are able to shift fairly easily into kata now, as they've done everything in kata, just in a chain of events with lots of random stuff going on.
In the end, I think it's easier for good randori people to do kata than it is for good kata people to do randori.