Since HISKF started in 2001, I guess this must be the twenty-third time that I\u2019m sending out New Year salutations to our group. Man, that\u2019s a lot of celebratory notes eh? This time, I wanted to take an excerpt from one of my old New Year notes from back in 2011 (Hey, if the Star Advertiser can recycle old photos from their archives every day, why can\u2019t I \u201cregift\u201d an old note? haha). Aside from wishes for a good new year, it also contained a short origin story about how your senseis ended up training in Karate-Do.<\/p>\n
Excerpt from New Year\u2019s Note Dec 2011\u2026<\/p>\n
Back in 1963, when I was just twelve years old, my dad had decided that I should learn the art of Aikido (not well-known then). I asked dad if I could invite a friend. After he said yes, I quickly called up my best friend from school and told him how neat it would be, to start training and learning a martial art together. In the few days before we joined, we sat in the living room of his home and weaved all kinds of fanciful scenarios of how our new-found skills would wow the girls in our class and awe any bullies in the cafeteria into submission \u2013 (this is how twelve-year olds think). Aikido turned out to be more than we\u2019d hoped for; though there were no fawning girls or awed bullies. Over the next few years, we learned throws, falls, rolls, holds, the bo and the bokken; not to mention a little bit of Japanese culture. By the time we got involved in other activities and had gradually ceased our training, we had completed intermediate school and graduated from different high schools. I only got to see my childhood pal on special occasions or during the holidays, and our busy lives were filled with other interests and groups of friends.<\/p>\n
The last time I ever remember visiting that home where I had spent so many days playing was on such a special day \u2013 New Years Eve. I had driven there to say \u201chi\u201d and to wish my friend and his family a Happy New Year. While waiting in the familiar living room, I noticed his older brother\u2019s many karate trophies lining the stereo-hi\/fi set. His brother was a black belt, training under his two idols, Asai Sensei and Funakoshi Sensei. Looking at the inscriptions, I was surprised to find my friend\u2019s name on a couple of the trophies! For the first time, I realized that at some point, my friend had begun training in Shotokan, like his brother. And at that moment, I decided to give karate a try too\u2026in the very living room where years earlier, we had fantasized about Aikido. Repeating the earlier process, I was able to persuade another long-time friend to start up with me. He agreed to give it a try \u2013 today, you know him as Sensei Peter. Ironically, the friend who had inspired me to try Shotokan, stopped karate training just about the time that we started. Fortunately, many of our other mutual friends continued to diligently train, including his college roommate \u2013 whom you now know as Sensei Wayne. Can you believe that 40 years have now passed and we\u2019re still at it?<\/p>\n
Well, in the years since I wrote that note, fortunately not much has changed \u2013 we\u2019ve gotten a bit older but we\u2019re still at it, though now, some 55 years have passed since our journey began.<\/p>\n
I wish you all a very Happy and Healthy New Year in 2025!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Since HISKF started in 2001, I guess this must be the twenty-third time that I\u2019m sending out New Year salutations to our group. Man, that\u2019s a lot of celebratory notes eh? This time, I wanted to take an excerpt from one of my old New Year notes from back in 2011 (Hey, if the Star Advertiser can recycle old photos from their archives every day, why can\u2019t I \u201cregift\u201d an old note? haha). Aside from wishes for a good new year, it also contained a short origin story about how your senseis ended up training in Karate-Do. Excerpt from New Year\u2019s Note Dec 2011\u2026 Back in 1963, when I was just twelve years old, my dad had decided that I should learn the art of Aikido (not well-known then). I asked dad if I could invite a friend. After he said yes, I quickly called up my best friend from school and told him how neat it would be, to start training and learning a martial art together. In the few days before we joined, we sat in the living room of his home and weaved all kinds of fanciful scenarios of how our new-found skills would wow the girls [...]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hiskarate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hiskarate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hiskarate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiskarate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiskarate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3184"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiskarate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3185,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiskarate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3184\/revisions\/3185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hiskarate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiskarate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hiskarate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}