New Year's Resolutions!

Peter Here!

Happy New year to everyone! I hope 2011 is a marvellous and successful year.

A tradition that seems to span the globe is that of New Year resolutions (shinnen no houfu, 新年の抱負) ; goals you want to achieve, bad habits you want to kick, life decisions to be made, mindsets to change, etc. I thought I would write down my own, so that people can kick me up the backside if I'm not keeping to them!

1. I will practice Karate every day: This is no different to what I am doing now, but it is good to set it in virtual stone. I will stretch Every Day for at least 30 minutes too, and make sure I keep up with my cardio exercises once my toe is completely fit!
2. I will practice Japanese for at least an hour every day: I want to be able to read and write too, so I will probably go to a language class this year- something that I didn't get round to doing last year!
3. I will listen to advice more, for Karate and teaching.
   
4. I will make more of an effort to remember names!
   
5. I will open a bank account: I usually have a lot of money in my wallet which, when I think about it, can be quite dangerous. A bank account would probably make my life here much easier.
6. I will prepare for lessons at least two days before the class: Sometimes Monday's lessons are planned on the day because I was busy over the weekend, which means there's less margin for error if I check them. Ideally I would like to make the next lesson plan immediately after the last lesson, so I'll try and do that.
7. I will complete private projects: I have a couple of websites that are karate-related on the go, but they have been very slow to get started. I want to have them finished by March! Then, any other projects can be tackled without these hanging over my head.
8. I will get a gold in at least one tournament this year, and at least two more silver: After the amazing training at Shiramizu, I want to get back into winning ways! At least one gold is an absolute minimum!
9. I will compete and spar with more confidence this year: I started doing this just before injuring my toe, so I look forward to getting back to competition fitness as soon as possible.
   
10. I will pass my JKF Wadokai Shodan test this year! This is the big 'Must Do' resolution; if I don't do this then I will be very very disappointed.
    
11. I will grade in Aikido: I was starting to really like aikido last year, and the bokken and jo practise was very interesting. I would like to grade or advance a little in it before my time in Japan is over, so I could do something similar back in the UK as well as karate.
12. Finally, I will find more people to teach English to, and improve the Internship.

I hope everyone who has made resolutions this year will succeed in sticking to them. Good luck!!

JKF National Tournament and Bonenkai

Peter Here,

The Winter chill settled into Tokyo on a bright Sunday 12th December morning, where Arakawa Sensei took his family and me to see the JFK Japanese Zenkoku Taikai (National Championships).

The JKF Tournament is a massive event (the finals of which is televised a week later), which is the climax of many prefecture, regional, company and university competitions, so to get here you must be really good.



Before setting out though, we first visited Masatoshi’s school, where there was an art fair and Masatoshi’s Karate Monkey had won a gold award, which we all marvelled at. Although this was a ‘best of school’ fair, it still amazes me just how good and advanced some kids can be in their field in comparison to back home, and we had a good look around the other displays before setting off to the Nippon Budokan to watch the tournament.



Richard and his international students were already there and quickly gave me a catch-up. Next was Kata, and Richard’s tournament game, which is to guess who wins each kata round before the judges raise their flags (with bonus bragging rights if you guess the correct amount of flags too). I joined in too, but as he has played the game much longer than I have Richard ran out comfortable winner.

Watching the amount of support (the audience, the recording crew, the support for the atheltes too) that the National competition has in Japan is really heart warming, and an inspiration to try and get even more support for the sport back home.

Sadly we could not watch the end of the competition because we had to get back to Kuki for the Shiramizu Bonenkai. As every Intern has written, a bonenkai is a large party to celebrate (or ‘forget’ as the name suggests) the passing of the year. This is done using a lot of speeches, food, and of course the natural amnesia aid, alcohol!



Everyone arrived in good spirits, and after settling down in their tiered positions (in such an event, seating positions are very important- with the most senior person right at the top of the banquet) we all ate and drank and listened to each other’s speeches. I had prepared one with the help Setsuko - one of my English Students - however in my ambition to make a good impression I think I made it far too long for the rapidly diminishing attention spans of the alcohol-fuelled revellers. Other people, such as Suzuki Sensei and Uchida-san, are amazing speakers and can really get everyone laughing.






The Bonenkai also had entertainment, firstly in the form of Bingo! Everyone was given a card, and a wealth of presents were available to select from. Naturally the first winners had the better pick. Gradually everyone had their numbers called, including me. What did I get? Some underpants that said ‘stinky’ and a lovely mask:



After this, Mikya performed on the guitar, singing in English as well. Very impressive! Then, a performing monkey came out and played keyboard, that monkey being me. I didn’t play very well, the nomi-hodai (all you can drink) starting to take it’s toll on my fingers a little, but people seemed to enjoy it enough. Perhaps that was because of the nomi-hodai too!





Although this was the last social event on the Shiramizu calendar, training continued right up until 23rd, with the customary 1000 punch drill.

Nippon Budokan - Kagami Biraki

Carl here...

Monday 12th January was the Nippon Budokan Kagami Biraki event.

The explanation...
This ceremony which can be literally translated into ‘unveiling of a round shaped mirror’ was originally performed by in the 15th Century by the 4th Tokugawa Shogun before going into battle, The Tokugawa’s won the battle and the ceremony has been popular ever since.


The official program
The ceremony involves an offering of two layers of small glutinous rice cakes to the gods on New Year’s Day to honour and purify a Samurai’s personal armour and weapons. The second part of the ceremony is cracking open a casket of Sake and sharing the contents.

Shiramizu has had these cakes on display in front of the small Shinto Shrine in the dojo for the last few weeks though I haven’t seen any Sake!

On January 11th or a short time after this, these mochi cakes are broken up by hand or hammer (knives aren’t used because they could signify cutting ties with people), and shared with the family or in samurai times, the clan.

This festival is believed to help strengthen family ties and friendship among warriors of the same clan.

Shiramizu
The Shiramizu dojo was invited along to take part in ceremony representing the JKF-Wadokai. In true form, Arakawa sensei took 50 students to the Nippon Budokan.


Kudanshita station
We met at Tobu-dobutsu-koen station on the morning and took the train straight to Kudanshita subway station. After a short walk through the grounds of the Imperial Palace, we arrived at the Budokan.

The ceremony was already underway, with lots of people lined up inside the main hall.


What followed after the bow and opening speeches was a large demonstration of traditional Samurai, in full armour. It was a very ceremonial affair where the chief was presented with a feast by his minions.


After this, the giant mochi cakes and the casket of Sake were wheeled into the middle of the hall.



The chief then proceeded to ‘unveil’ the cakes and casket with the help of a huge hammer.


The samurai clan then marched around the Budokan hall and left.

Demonstrations
What followed were demonstrations from 9 modern martial arts, I caught the Kyuudo (Archery) and Karate demonstrations which were good and a little of the bayonet demo.

Pose!
All the Shiramizu people met the rest of the Karate students from some other dojo (sorry, I don’t know which ones) for a photo outside the Budokan. At this point it started to snow which made us all even colder.


Photo taken from the blog of Arakawa sensei

Arakawa Sensei was quite funny, after the photo was taken it started snowing pretty hard but Sensei still wanted to quickly speak to everyone. I don’t know exactly what he said but I think it was something like ‘why are you complaining about the cold? You’re all supposed to be tough karate students!’ with his trademark grin, everyone started laughing and stopped shivering immediately!

Training in the Budokan
After posing for a customary photo with the rest of the Shiramizu and Hideo Takagi Sensei, we had a short wait until we were allowed into the main hall for training.

This was quite a good experience, there was eight different martial arts practising at the same time in the Budokan. The martial arts were: Karatedo; Kendo; Iaido(?); Aikido; Judo; Naginata; Kenpo(?); and Sumo.


Lawrence in front, that's me just behind him...

Karate was in the middle of the hall, with approximately 80 students training in basics, kata and kumite for about 45 minutes. It was a challenge to keep focused on my kata, especially when I was more interested in the Kendo people whacking each other and the Judo people throwing each other around!

Ikimasho – let’s go...!
As soon as the training was over, and everyone bowed out, the Budokan offered everyone Miso soup. Shiramizu was on a tight schedule though and couldn’t partake in the rest of the event. Everyone had to get back to Sugito for the ‘official’ Shiramizu start of year training session that was taking place on the evening. Arakawa Sensei and I were the last to leave the Budokan, so we had to jog to the station to catch up to everyone.

...just another busy day at the office!

19th WKF World Karate Championships 2008 Full Results

Lawrence again (no, they haven't shipped me home.... yet...).

I took the liberty of scanning the complete results from all the divisions from the recent WKF World Karate Championships here in Tokyo, Japan.

***After you click on one selection below, then click on the button on the bottom right hand corner to expand***

Enjoy!

Kata - Individual Female
Kata - Individual Male
Kata - Team Female
Kata - Team Male
Kumite - Female -53kg
Kumite - Female -60kg
Kumite - Female +60kg
Kumite - Female Open
Kumite - Team Female
Kumite - Male -60kg
Kumite - Male -65kg
Kumite - Male -70kg
Kumite - Male -75kg
Kumite - Male -80kg
Kumite - Male +80kg
Kumite - Male Open
Kumite - Team Male

WKF World Karate Championships 2008 Day 4 Report

Richard here with my day 4 report, which is a semi-wrap up of several days! I'll also wrap up with another post of interesting stories and thoughts later in the week, plus Carl and Lawrence will throw up their own posts with their own impressions too.

By Day 4 Lawrence and I had figured out that a) we were actually able to do more supervising work by each taking two rings which allowed us to help more people more efficiently and b) just us keeping moving, as the other staff started to sit and watch the events from being worn out from a hectic 4 days, we found we could also help the WKF & JKF organizers keep the tournament on schedule.

Canada got medals! Saeed Baghbani -70kg got bronze and Nassim Varasteh -60kg got silver!

I do want to point out right up front that from the WKF's Estevan down to all the volunteers, many people did work quite hard to run the tournament, even though there were some organizational bugs in some areas. But really, the way this worlds is set up now just needs a little fine tuning and it would be perfect for the Olympics!

While some people said to me the emphasis on the importance of respect and budo 's humbleness would be lost, others said the amount of money being in the Olympics would attract to set up training centers that would benefit millions of regualr karate people would be worth it.

My opinion is why not allow some people to train hard and shoot to be an Olympic athlete, as people should be abl to go after their dream. If being an Olympic sport attracts people into karate dojos, it is really up to the instructors to be professional enough to be able to teach both sport and traditional karate with a balance. It's kind of like the hot sport's car in the window of a car dealership brings in the customers, but most decide on the value and usefulness of a regular car instead.

In terms of the heavy weight events on the last day (RESULTS , DIVISION DRAW RESULTS).

Rafael Aghayev from Azerbaijan, who won the Men's Open on Saturday, also won his -70kg division on Sunday, and he was by far the most enjoyable fighter to watch, being only 5'9'' maybe, but extremely explosive as he seemed to stretch his technique beyond what his joints were capable of allowing.

He almost got kiken, disqualified, for being very late to his -70kg semi-final round, and I had to warn his coach directly to be more careful. Some Japanese didn't like all his extra gestures or movements, but he looked like he was having a good time and that came through to the audience, many of whom wanted his autograph after.

Elisa Fonseca Au came 2nd in the +60kg div.

Those are VIP seats in the front, which athletes aka non-VIPs tried to sit in and I ended up having to clear them out. One joked he would toss me from the top, but I pointed out to him I would crash land on the IOC executive monitoring the event below who was making an official report for the IOC in regards to karate's application (to be decided in Oct 2009), which would blow karate's chance of getting into the Summer Olympics. I can just see the headlines, ''IOC official squashed to death at karate event by staff member thrown from third balcony...''

Ona previous day, a Canadian kata athlete, I think Vadovicova, who didn't get through her first round. Very sorry if I get names and results wrong as I had so many things to handle at the same time.

That's 'Shihan Magnifico Manual Monzon', Head Coach for Canada, in the coach' chair. I've known him for years and with our several running jokes it seems I was able to keep him happy with this new moniker, especially when I had to ask him to be seated inside the competition area...

The Japanese man in the white jacket looking at the camera in the bottom right corner with the goatee is Kato Sensei (Wadokai), who was lots of fun to listen to as he had opinions about everything, especially as he was sweating so much from working hard like the rest of us in our very nice, but designed for -10 degree weather, jackets.

As you can see from some of the pictures there were 4 mats in a row, and white curtains around the arena, but this meant there were no places for athletes to watch the matches from the floor area.

Canada's Toshi Uchiage in his first round from a previous day. He unfortunately didn't go through the round, which might be due to his knee surgery he had previously in the year..

There was a large poster showing the new WKF face mask for -21 age divisions. While the top part is pretty good, the nose is not totally protected and with the mouth and chin not protected at all, when for sure 50% of light face injuries are to the mouth, it seems the designers need to work on this idea some more. I heard a university in Italy was going through different ideas and that from their research there is no need to protect the mouth or chin, only the nose bridge, but this is really incomplete to me. However, it's a good start, for sure karate needs it and I like the clear plastic.

The Japanese head guards are bulky and take some getting use to, but they're great because one almost never has to call a doctor to the ring, sometimes for a whole day.

My old coach Reza Salmani (former UAE head coach and BC Team Head Coach in Canada) came to watch the tournament so it was great to catch up with him, even if we only had a few free minutes here and there.

One of the two large display screens. Actually for Japanese standards they were small, only about 15-20' high, whereas for the Japanese Nationals, they're huge!

Sorry, fuzzy photo of an awards ceremony, but you get the idea...

Um, Lawrence, you have your thumb in someone's nose - and the person taking the picture cut me right out of it!

Saturday night Lawrence and I had a late, but relaxing dinner at 'Yakitori Gen', an issakaya pub near the Budokan, with Oliva Sensei and his wife Carmen, Arakawa Sensei (who worked the whole tournament organizing athletes in the warm-up area), my good friend from Shiga Koich Nakano (who kindly bought me a change of clothes since I realized earlier in the day there was no way I would make it home due to how late everything would run), and Koichi's friend Kouki with his co-worker Sayuri (?). We had a wonderful time talking karate shop while listening to Oliva Sensei's thoughts and observations.

Oliva Sensei was saying how the majority of winners were not from G8 developed countries, but from developing countires that 20yrs ago didn't have the understanding of technique and training, but now they do , and that their people are used to be tough because it is harder to earn a living then compared to Japan or Western Europe, or the US.

Lawrence and I had to run for the very last subway train (12:15am) to go back to his place where we crashed for 5 hours before having to get up and come back to the Budokan by 8am for Sunday's final day.

For me my brain has been so worked around this event since Wednesday night, by Friday and Saturday when I actually got a little sleep, I even dreamed both times I was still on the Budokan floor, rushing to check divisions and kicking out people who weren't supposed to be there. Lawrence said he had dreamt the same sort of thing too!

The final reception on Sunday night had some great taiko drumming!

Lawrence and I actually created some fun work for ourselves by going around the banquet hall, filled with 1300 people, and finding anyone on any team to get their signature and give them the final official results. Many grumpy people we had to eject from the competition area were very friendly when we would shout things like 'Poland! Yes, Poland we've been looking for you!' (at which they would cringe a bit thinking they were not supposed to be here either, ha!) and then give them the results and be on our merry way to find someone else.

Wessel and David, the Seiritsu Gakuen foreign students who are in my karate club, watched all day on Sunday and seemed to have a great time. Check out the Seiritsu home page later this week to read their impressions of the event.

Here are two beautiful karate students from Kazumasa Itaki Sensei of the Yokota Air Base Karate Club. Each night from Thursday to Sunday they showed up in different, equally gorgeous kimono to help with the award ceremonies. We were promised a picture with them each night, but since we were sooo busy, by Sunday I thought they might have left as the work men quickly tore down everything at the very end (as there is a concert by The Who on Monday night the next day in the Budokan!). Yet we got lucky and I was thinking how my little Ema will look in a kimono when she's all grown up...

All in all, it was a great experience and I again thank everyone I interacted with, plus Arakawa Sensei for recommending me to the JKF office.

Richard

WKF World Karate Championships 2008 Day 1 Report

Richard here with the Day 1 Report!

It's Thu Nov 13, Day One of the WKF World Championships, the absolute premier karate event held every 2 years. Arakawa Sensei was asked by the JKF office to round up some people who could translate hence I was drafted.

Yesterday was sort of wonky with the 6pm prep meeting not materializing at the Nippon Budokan martial arts arena, and then Arakawa Sensei, Amy and I being sent to the Prince Shin-Takanawa event hotel where they just turned us around and sent us back to the Budokan. Hmm. Very unlike the precision planning Japan is known for.

Arakawa Sensei's job is marshalling athletes from the warm-up area to the on-deck area at the side of the rings. Always smiling, I think he is really enjoying meeting so many foreigners.

My job ended up today translating for the head table area, so I was able to watch quite a bit of the competition. Tomorrow I will help this area again, plus the security staff will be more strict with whom to allow enter the competition area, meaning no one who's not competing or a coach of an athlete competing at any given moment, id card or not.

Again, the orgainzation left a lot to be desired...

But seeing so many faces of people I have met over the years was great both yesterday and today. Reza Salmani (UAE Team and my very close friend), Robbie Smith (NZ Wadokai), Ticky Donovan (UK Head Coach, who ran some seminars in Vancouver in the '90s), Manuel Monzon (Canada Head Coach, who is as gracious as ever!), Gary Sabean (Canada Coach, wonderful guy), and many more actually, plus Norma of course.

Some results:

Men's Team Kata: France Gold, Japan Silver

Women's Team Kata: Japan Gold, France Silver

Women's Team Kumite: Germany Gold, Spain Silver (I think I got this right...)

Some really amazing fights, like during men's team kumite, Japan fought Croatia I believe and in the 3rd round, Shinji Nagaki fought someone well over a foot taller and twice his body weight. The opponent kept trying to thrown him down, which he did but he couldn't land a solid punching technique after so Nagaki scored some punches and then after the buzzer while play was in motion, did a wonderful taken down on this much bigger person - he won but it was too late to get 3 pts.

Today was team kata eliminations, team kumite through to the finals, and then the finals above, with men's team kata starting off tomorrow (Fri) from the 4th round. I believe Japan got through, but Canada lost their first round.

The referee's are very very strict on scoring and most standard scoring techniques don't get a point, very similar to Oliva Sensei saying last Sunday about all the mechanical needs for a point being required - more on that later.

New WKF rules! From Jan 1 I heard

- no more 'mienai' where the seated ref covers their eyes to say they they didn't see a technique score, now they will have to see it or not - no more enshosen, it will be called saishai and the scoreboard will be cleared of past penalities - all hand techniques one point no matter what - 3 points for any scored hand techinque on an opponent who falls whether the fighter put their opponent down safely or they slipped and fell on their own - no more re-decisions of the refs meaning once they decide that's it.

Olympics 2016

Well, the best chance for karate is that Tokyo gets the Summer Games. Only individual kumite has been proposed, which most people know. Oct 2009 the IOC will decide. Difficult I heard...

New tournament for people who have never competed in the WKF Worlds because they didn't qualify, so that they can get international experience...

Well, it's after midnight and I have to get up again in 6hrs. The high spirited athletes are great to see, and the Budokan being kind of tight spaced actually makes for a more pressurized energetic atmosphere. Of course much more happened, I made some great new friends (Onuki Sensei, Itaki Sensei, Kano Sensei, and more) plus Kenji Sato (half Japanese, half Cuban) was impressive moving from Spanish, English and Japanese fluently at the head table!

More tomorrow!

Richard