HIS Karate-Do

I suppose that my greatest past-time for enjoyment, based upon the number of hours I spend doing it each week is…reading.  A form of relaxation/development that I’m sure is shared with many in our group.  I do have a bad habit of reading, perhaps, a half-dozen books simultaneously.  No, I don’t have multiple books open, reading them together, like those chess masters who play multiple game boards with multiple opponents, haha.  It’s more like watching various TV series in a given night or week.  I’ll pick up one book and read a score of pages one night, and the next night, I’ll do the same with one or two others.  I think that many folks have a hard time keeping up with what’s going on in any particular book if they put it down for a week or two.  Like I said, for me, it’s no different than watching a continuing episode of Hawaii 5-0, then switching to Last Man Standing and finishing up with the news. Anyways, my usual areas of interest are: history, science, social science, etc.  About the only fiction I read is the type that got me started on reading back when I was about 10 [...]

Like most activities, you meet and train with all sorts of folks in the karate line-up. Young, old, men, women, professionals, craftsmen, college students, housewives, retirees….and so on. The karateka in our group look like anyone you might pass on the street or at the mall. Karate-do, of course, is not so much about how one looks on the outside, but what one carries on the inside. In my many years of training and teaching, there is one guy who always stuck out in my mind as what a mature asian martial artist should look like. Actually, with his short stocky build, close cropped hair, weathered tanned face, and quiet, serious eyes; I always thought that he resembled a buddhist monk. All he needed was a robe and bo to complete the image. In later years he often sported a goatee that added even more to this image. At 51, he was the oldest member of our dojo – ironically, he’d be about the youngest in our current second class, haha. When he first entered our SKC dojo nearly twenty years ago, it was after a long, long break from Shotokan training. A humble man, he entered our dojo, asking [...]

At a recent birthday party in my honor, my family played a slide show about my life, and naturally, there was a segment on karate through the years.  There were various impromptu shots taken of training in the dojo or outside, at some old gasshuko beach session.  A couple, however, were of me in karate gi, making a pre-determined karate pose – you know, the kind we hate to have taken, haha. Once in a great while, karateka will be asked to strike a favorite pose for a photograph.  It can be kind of an awkward moment and folks will place some thought into what movement from what kata or kumite posture they think best captures their skill or knowledge level (haha).  Good or bad, it’s caught for posterity and most karateka looking at it (critics, all) will have an opinion.  Personally, I have never given much thought about what pose I would use.  About 17 or 18 years ago, my fellow sensei and I decided to have professional photos taken of our karate club – by professional, I mean a photographer who specialized in taking sports clubs photos (like baseball, soccer, etc).  When it was my turn to pose, [...]