Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Welcome 'English Intern', v4.0!


Amy and Carl after they have arrived at Shiramizu, after more than 20 hours of traveling on cars, planes and more cars!
And the internship just keeps growing and growing, the most recent growth happening on July 1st with the Shiramizu Internship's 4th intern, and the first non-Canadian.

Mr. Carl Jorgeson learned about the internship through this very blog and, like the rest of the interns, jumped at the chance to spend a year training hard, seeing the sights, and living the culture.

But more than that, his fiance Amy Coulson decided to come along as well! While Carl is the official intern, Amy will have just as many opportunities to see Japan, practice karate and experience living in a new country all for herself.

The past two days, however, have mostly been settling in. There is now a "Shiramizu Internship Apartment" and Carl and Amy, along with much help from Arakawa Sensei and other dojo staff, started to get things like washing machines, have the lights hooked up and so on.

As the week goes on (and their jetlag disappears), they will get a chance to start their karate training here as Shiramizu also resumes normal hours since most of this week has been only for kyu tests.

And the two of them can start preparing for their first Japan competition, the Wadokai National Championships on August 18 and 19! Unfortunately they missed the registration deadline for the Saitama Wadokai Tournament, but I made it so I'll be waving the intern banner there.

But in the meantime, keep checking back as I get read you pass my blog duties to Carl, Intern v4.0.

Richard here - Carl said he likes the idea of being called the 'English Intern' but to the Japanese all the interns have been English since that word relates to language only, so for Carl we might have to say the English-English Intern, the British-English Intern, or maybe the Real English Intern... let's see what sticks.

Welcome to Japan!

(L to R): Richard Sensei, Amy, Arakawa Sensei, Carl, Lawrence

(Photo courtesy of Arakawa Sensei's blog)

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