Richard's new bilingual blog has started! Yikes!

Last week I started my new bilingual blog at www.richardmosdell.com!

And within the first week, it has already been added to the blogs profiled by the JKF's own homepage, which gets thousands of hits a day! See the picture below, where my blog is listed in the top row on the far left, with Arakawa Sensei's blog listed on the far right!


Yikes, the pressure is on to be somewhat interesting now. I'm going to try to blog every 2nd day about things mainly related to the karate world I'm swimming around in, along with whatever else I find interesting that others might also, or things that I simply bump into or bump into me.

Richard

Satou Steakhouse

Erica here.

Two weekends ago, my parents were in town for a couple days so I spent some time with them (which is why I missed out on Disneyland).

My mom did some research before coming to Japan and found an article on a very popular steakhouse in Kichijoji and that visitors should definitely go and try it if they get the chance. So we took the train from Shinjuku to Kichijoji (6 stops west of Shinjuku on the Rapid Chuo Line) . When we got out of the train station, I realized we had no clue where it was because the article gave no directions! After asking a couple people for directions in my broken Japanese, we finally found it.

The inside of the restaurant was tiny, I estimated about 15 seats in total. The waitress sat us down then proceeds to explain the menu in Japanese, but when we give her a blank look she switched to English ( it happens a lot). She recommended one of the more expensive steaks on the menu telling us that it was "Japan's #1 steak". Now, let me give you an idea of what the prices were for this particular one.

Tokusen Sirloin Steak

180g (6.3oz) 8,400yen ($92US)

270g (9.5oz) 12,500yen ($137US)

360g (12.7oz) 16,800yen ($186US)

I told my parents that I was not going to have a steak that is worth almost 100 Canadian dollars and that I wanted to have the cheaper ones. But they insisted that we all try the recommended one because we came here for the sole purpose of trying these heavenly steaks. My dad then goes into an explanation of how the cows in which the steaks come from are fed vegetables, are massaged every night and get to listen to classical music. I’m not sure if I believe all of that but they talked me into it.

So we had 3 orders of the 180g Tokusen Sirloin and they showed us the steak before it was cooked and let me tell you, I have never seen a piece of steak that was so marbled and even distributed at the same time. Eating it was a different story, yes it melted in mymouth kind of steak, but because there was so much fat in it, it felt very oily to me. Perhaps I wasn’t used to this type of steak and apparently the Japanese thoroughly enjoy them. So I definitely think it’s something you should try...but maybe only once =)

My medium-rare steak.

First Time to Disneyland

Louise here,

On Monday I went with the Arakawa family (Arakawa sensei, his wife Keiko and his two sons, Yusuke and Masatoshi) to Tokyo Disneyland for the first time, hooray! Erica was spending time with her parents who had come over to Japan for a short visit. It was a cold and cloudy day, but that didn't stop what seemed like half of Tokyo also going to Disneyland.

We went on the big rides: Big Thunder Mountain, Splash Mountain and Space Mountain. I think the best one was Space Mountain, an insane roller coaster ride in the dark. It was scarier not being able to see where we were going.

Before the crowds got bad, Big Thunder Mountain

The main detraction from the experience I found was the crowds. We spent a lot of the day standing in line for rides that'd be only a few minutes long. Also, there were so many things to do that, to do everything with those crowds, we'd have to spend several days there. In other words, I will have to go back again!

In front of Cinderella's castle: l-r Arakawa sensei, Masatoshi, me wearing my newly acquired Monsters Inc. hat

Finally, after indulging my inner child by riding the merry go round, we watched the Electrical Parade Dreamlights. There were many floats with Disney characters outlined in coloured lights, such as Mickey and Minnie Mouse (of course), Cinderella, Sully and Mike from Monsters Inc., Nemo, Peter Pan and Pooh.

Just as we were heading home, walking toward the carpark, the clouds burst and it was like someone had turned on a garden hose above us. We ran for the car but still got very wet. The many people still in the park must've been soaked as well. Good thing it happened on the way home.

Half of Captain Hook's ship

New JKF headquarters building!

Richard here!
Here's a picture of the brand new JKF headquarters! It's officially called the Japan Karate Building (nihon karate kaikan 日本空手会館).

The new kaikan is located southeast Tokyo near ShinKiba. To get there, take the
Yurakucho subway east to Tatsumi station, then a 5min walk, so with one change maybe it takes 20min from Tokyo station.

The first floor has an office, conference room, warehouse, and lobby.

The second floor has a medium sized dojo, a master's room (probably a Japanese tatami washitsu room), a training room, locker rooms and showers.

The third floor large dojo.

More news related to the kaikan in the near future related to the internship...

Welcome, Hans

Louise here,

On Tuesday night, we had a visitor to the Shiramizu dojo. Hans Haering is from Germany, and while visiting Japan he wanted to do some training. Hans is a shodan, and has been learning Wado karate for ten years. Now he trains at Karate PSV Dresden e.V. in Dresden, under Frank Heinze sensei.

When Hans is not training, he is a project engineer for the company Sigmar Mothes Hochdrucktechnik GmbH in Berlin, and a PhD student at the Technical University of Dresden, studying chemical engineering. He was in Japan for a conference at the Tohoku University in Sendai and afterwards spent ten days sightseeing in Kyoto, Hiroshima and Tokyo, fitting in training with Michio Sato sensei at the Sendai Miyagi-ken Budokan, and with Shiramizu.

Hans said that Japan is very easy to travel around, due to the efficiency of the public transport system. He was also impressed by the hospitality of the Japanese people, with many going out of their way to help. Training at Shiramizu however was the highlight of his trip, he said.

After training. (Kneeling l-r: Toshi Okano, Hiroyuki Uehara sensei, Hans Haering, Takamasa Arakawa sensei, Hitoshi Kikuchi sensei)

Nippon Budokan Budo-gakuen Training Camp

Louise here,

Last weekend, the 24^th and 25^th of October, Erica and I attended the Nippon Budokan Budo Gakuen's training camp at the Saitama Kenritsu (Prefectural) Budokan (埼玉県立武道館） in Ageo City, Saitama.

Yoshihara Noriko sensei, Yamazaki Yukiko sensei and two junior high school students also attended from Shiramizu. It was a camp also for other martial arts: there were people practicing kendo, judo, shorinji kempo, aikido, jodo, and naginata. Takamasa Arakawa sensei, and Kazuhiro Toya sensei from Guseikai Tokyo, taught the karate sessions. Including the Shiramizu people, there were maybe only a dozen karate people training.

Cover of the camp programme

I was very impressed with the Budokan training halls. The main training building seemed newly built and besides wooden-floored training halls it included an archery range.

The first day we trained in a very large hall with kendo, nagainata and jodo people. In the afternoon there was a seminar about how to treat sport sprains and strains, where we taped up each other's ankles.

The second day we trained in another very large hall. Though there were only a few of us, I enjoyed the training, especially practicing applications from chinto, kihon kumite and jiyu kumite drills. It was also interesting to see how the other martial arts trained, especially naginata, which I hadn't seen before.

One end of the main training hall (jodo to the right, kendo behind to the left)

Sugito City Championships 2009

Erica here.

Last Sunday, October 18, Louise and I participated in the Sugito City Competition. It was a very small one, consisting of about 200 competitors for 4 different clubs. It took place at the Takanodai Elementary School.

l-r Louise & Erica with their medals & tournament result certificates.

Louise in kata action.

Interestingly, Louise and I were the only adult females in the competition. So for kata, we got put into the men’s division. I was in the adult coloured belt category which was made up of 5 people, myself included, while Louise competed in the adult black belt category which had 3 people. I made it through 2 rounds to get into the finals and there I won my first gold medal in Japan! Unfortunately, Louise had a very tough opponent in her category and did not advance to the finals for kata.

Then came the exciting bit: kumite! Because Louise and I were the only adult females competing, we went straight into the finals to have our match. We waited until the very end when all the different divisions had finished with their preliminary and semi-final rounds and we filed into the gym with all the other finalists in a big procession with music playing and everything. I must say, this was the first time I had such a grand entrance to a final round! With the entire gym watching, each pair went up and fought their hardest for first place and everyone cheered them on. When it came for our turn, I went up hoping to score at least one point during the 2 minute match. Louise won of course and our end score was 4 – 9. Yatta!! Personal victory for me =) It should be noted here that this is Louise's first gold medal in Japan too!

Misaki Yoshia from Shiramizu dojo - an up and coming kata champ who has won her junior high school division at the Wadokai Nationals plus had her kata profiled online by JKfan magazine.

The each age division's kumite finalists line up against each other for the final event, which is a show of each final round one after the other going from youngest to oldest.

l-r Erica vs Louise in kumite.

Kids from the dojo!

Smiles are a good way to end the day.

Because more than half the competitors were from Shiramizu, many of the matches had fighters going against a member of their club. I guess it further motivates them to do better since there is pre-existing competitiveness for some of them (especially with the junior high kids). There were smiles and there were tears and everyone put in the best efforts.

Everything ok? The Japanese sign for everything is 'ready to go' that someone far away

can see is to make a circle above one's head with one's hands.