Later this year, Sensei Peter and I reach one of the major milestones in life as one matures – we become eligible for Medicare, haha! Truthfully, as federal retirees, we already have medical coverage via FEHB, so it’s not as exciting a milestone as…say, finally qualifying for purchase of a Zippy’s  Restaurant card!!  (Where your sensei’s gather after Saturday training to er…discuss martial arts history and um…secret karate techniques 🙂  Yeah, there’s gotta be a few benefits we can glean from getting old.

Actually, for us men of Japanese ancestry, one of the big milestones is the Kanreki (celebrating one’s 60th birthday), which was a few years ago for us.  My wife and I were talking about how this appears to be a dying tradition among us sansei (not sensei 😉 and I rarely have attended one since my dad’s generation hit this hallowed mark some 30+ years ago.  Fortunately for me, I have a wife and kids who are among the best party and entertainment gurus around and they threw the old man a big one at the Hawaii Prince golf course back in 2011.

My favorite memory of the festivities was when my daughter did a masterful impression of her dad (complete with mustache) leading a “typical’ karate class.  She persuaded her brother, husband, cousins and spouses to play the part of “class”.  To this day, I do not know how they came up with enough gi’s for everyone.  The party theme was Las Vegas and Elvis (don’t ask me why).  Trish did a fantastic job of evoking my fine and powerful technique :o, and faced the challenge of teaching the completely uncoordinated white (er, brown sash with glitter?) belts the finer points and nuance of karate-do.  Obviously in the photo, she was sharing her philosophy on the importance of hip and snap.  Perhaps it was the “Jailhouse Rock” music in the background, but unfortunately, “class” was stuck on Elvis style hip and snap instead.  I had a hard time believing that all of these “students” were former students of mine, with a couple of black belts, a brown belt and a green belt in the mix….What Acting!!  A lot of hard work went into the celebration and a great time was had by all.  It’s too bad getting Medicare doesn’t come with such fanfare, haha.

Milestones….and Medicare….Hey, speaking of Mike Stone (clever seque eh?), he was a famous mainland karateka who was from Hawaii.  His claim to karate fame was winning 90 straight matches in kumite back in the 60’s and 70’s.  Anyways, one of Elvis’ long-time passions was – karate!  He was a personal student of another famous Hawaiian martial artist, the late Ed Parker, who was a master of American Kenpo Karate.  Elvis eventually earned his black belt in Kenpo Karate.  Later, his wife, Priscilla Presley studied with Sensei Mike Stone and they eventually ended up together.  Back in the 70’s, one night at our late night special training class, Sensei Wayne, Peter and i noticed a beautiful woman sitting on the dojo bench watching our arduous training.  She and her escort left shortly before training ended.  Sensei Funakoshi informed us that the couple watching us were Sensei Mike Stone and Priscilla Presley!  I hope we looked better than the “class” at my Kanreki, haha.  Please remember to always do your best at training – you never know who will be watching you.