Over the last three Saturdays, we have enjoyed training with Sensei Ed Fujiwara, and I know everyone (myself included!) has learned so much from these sessions; especially his famous lines, “Easy training today!”, or “More down in your stances!” Sensei always has had an ironic/sardonic sense of humor. Anyways, he finally gets to teach at the NHM karate ministry’s new location at Mililani Ike School, Building E. I understand that similar to Momilani Rec, it’s an outside covered area. We are all invited to bless his new location on Saturday and train with him there for his inaugural session. Sensei and I will share teaching duties like we did today. Training will start at 09:00 am, just like usual. I will be sure to send out a map later this week so no one gets lost. You’ll find that just like training with a different instructor, training at different location is…different! And that, in itself, is a learning experience. I learned an interesting thing from Sensei Ed these last couple of weeks. First, he switched from a different martial art to karate many, many years ago, because of a chance visit to his high school friend’s house. His friend’s older [...]

COMBINED TRAINING WITH SENSEI ED THIS SATURDAY, JUNE 7 Talk about God’s timing. A few days ago, I sent Sensei Ed Fujiwara a note suggesting that his group and us, having a combined karate training together. In case you don’t know, Sensei Ed was my instructor for a period of 7-8 years and I can’t describe how much about Shotokan I learned from him during that time. Today, he’s the ministry leader of the New Hope Mililani Karate Club. Now, here’s where the Lord’s timing comes into play: At the same time that I sent him my note, suggesting joint training, the NHM Karate Club was temporarily without a training location…this past Saturday was the last time they were able to use Mililani Waena. Not to worry, their pastor secured Mililani Iki for their use, but that commences on Saturday, three weeks from now. So, at the exact same time that the NHM group was temporarily without their Saturday training place, NHPC’s offer of combined training at Momilani Rec Center was made. Neat, eh? This Saturday is also the first one of the month, which means everyone is invited for two hours of training. Please try to make it…I’m not [...]

Click to see the full panoramic photo The other day, as we were cleaning our old home, I came across a thick, old, rolled up poster…or so I thought. Upon unrolling the “poster”, I discovered that it was an old loooong black and white photo from my dad’s house, that I hadn’t ever seen before. Some you older folks have seen these before; the super-wide funeral photo that used to be taken at old-style Japanese funerals in Hawaii. Staring back at me in suits and black dresses were the stern faces of perhaps 150 mourners (the only time, I think, when the photographer doesn’t say “Smile!” or “Cheese!”). It was dated Feb 7, 1958; a half-century ago and captured the large group of friends and relatives who attended the service for Shunshin Shimabukuro – my Okinawan grandfather. My very capable IT friend was able to scan the long narrow photo into a 15 megabyte file and Voila! I was able to view it on my PC. Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, I was able to to magnify the image by 700% without losing hardly any clarity. I looked in wonder, as my mom’s face filled the screen, gazing [...]