The other day, I was playing “cat and mouse” with our two rather aged cats, Nikki and Simba. In this case, I was the “mouse”, as I twisted, turned, thrust and pulled a foot-long metal wire (a good cat toy) with a feather at the end. I say “aged”, because they’re both 14 years old as of last March. When you calculate it out, if a cat lives to be roughly 17-20 years old (at least the ones that live in the relative safety of a nice home), then, the average year equates to roughly 5 cat-years. Hmmm…5 X 14 equals 70 cat-years. Yet, the brother and sister tabbies look pretty much like they always did, though they do spend an inordinate amount of time sleeping these days. I remember back in 1995, when they were two tiny kittens, marveling at the speed of their movements while they were “sparring” with each other. If you’ve ever watched two kittens playing in a blurr of fur, you know what I mean. And here, “70 years” later, these old felines still have “got it”, albeit with a little less flash and losing their interest in the “mouse” after a couple of minutes. [...]

When my dad and I eat lunch every week, we spend time catching up on whatever happened over the past seven days since we last saw each other. I will often ask, “Anything new happening Dad?” His normal response is, “Nothing much…” Then he’ll go on to describe whatever little changes occurred over the week; a patient at Dialysis receiving a kidney transplant, a fellow resident recovering from pneumonia, the neighbor’s cat giving him a small scratch on the hand, the last batch of Fuji apples I got him were not as crunchy as he liked, and so on. Multiply that by 52 weeks, and you have a year in which “nothing much new happened.” And at 86 years old, that’s not so bad…a decent quality of life, no emergencies, a few small scratches, the old memory’s still holding up, appetite’s good, etc. Then, once in a great while, Dad will wax philosophically and think about the years 1977, 1997 and 2006, in particular. Those years stand out in his mind, as these mark major events in his autumn/winter years: in 1977, Mom unexpectedly passed away; in 1997, he suffered his first stroke; in 2006, he moved out of his [...]

First of all, there’s no training for Saturday, 23 May. That day, the Shotokan Karate International Federation (SKIF) will be holding its yearly karate tournament at the old Manoa gymnasium. Senseis Trisha, Peter and I will be helping out with judging at the event. If any of you are interested in participating in the kata competition, please come see me for application forms…it costs $15 to enter. The SKIF in Hawaii is headed up by my friend Sensei, Victor Takemori. Sensei Vic has been a life-long student under Shotokan great, Kancho Kanazawa (Kancho is a title). As most of you know, Kancho Kanazawa is the founder and leader of the world-wide SKIF, which has hundreds of thousands of members. Many years ago, Kancho (former JKA champion) began his overseas teaching career right here in Hawaii….and Sensei Vic became one of his first students. Both men are not only great and knowledgable karate instructors, but possess fine, humble characters. Sensei Vic is in his late seventies, but still actively sharing the art of karate-do. Ironically, as you know, I never mention tournaments, nor do we do any training that is related to tournaments in our ministry. Personally, I think that tournaments [...]