Week 4- Completing the first month

Pete here,

Well, Tuesday, June 22 also had other events, as I also got my foreigner card (gaikokujin torokusho)! Unfortunately when Arakawa Sensei and I got to the city office, the department was on lunch, so we had to follow suit (but it was forced! What? Don’t look at me like that). Once we returned and collected my shiny card, we drove to a tennis tournament, where Yusuke’s school was taking part. On the way we talked about Shiramizu, his dojo branches, how karate is taught for just competition in schools and the vital difference between that and training in a dojo.

Whilst there, I saw exactly how large a figure Arakawa Sensei is in the community; almost everyone knows him, and he in turn knows them as well, showing an amazing memory!

After enduring the midday heat for only a little while, we returned to the sanctuary of an air-conditioned car and drove back to the dojo for the English classes.

Wednesday I was invited out with Sensei and his family to a ‘viking’ style restaurant- all you can eat, and a barbecue in the middle of the table. Awesome! Yusuke introduced me to all the different foods – in English – and Masatoshi showed me how to work the candy floss machine. More details and pictures are on Sensei’s blog!

Saturday was a large training day. As Wednesday’s class had been canceled I decided to meet up with Richard and train with him at his school dojo in Akabane. It was a 3 and a half hour session, from kihon to kumite endurance and stamina training (which believe me, I need). Vital things I got from that session:

1) I can be longer in the stances.

2) I shouldn’t wobble so much, try to keep upright (this has been mentioned in other classes as well)

3) I *really* need to work on my hikite- it’s very slow

4) The left hip needs work, as I tend to double over when kicking over chudan

5) My maai needs adjusting (though I’ve known this for a while and it is improving)

6) I must spend less time setting myself up for a combination

7) More stamina and more speed

It was a brutal, but open and honest assessment, and everything pointed out I knew was useful to me and so graciously taken.

After the training was over I had to head back to Shiramizu for the evening session. Unfortunately that also meant a change of dogi as my condition of turning into a pool of water when I set foot in any dojo has not yet been remedied, so arrived at the session late. This was a great shame as Arakawa Sensei had his guest teacher in, Fujimoto Sensei from Guseikai Tokyo, who was once a member of the Japanese national team.

The session was incredible; just one hour of training improved my mindset about kumite. The basic principle of keeping your stance low, shifting your body and not your feet and transferring your weight is definitely something I can see myself using in tournaments as it benefits my longer reach. It also helped that I was starting to feel the benefit of the past month’s training, both in strength and flexibility.

Afterwards, it was time to socialise. For more than one reason, too: one of the Shiramizu members was moving away, so it was also a goodbye party. We headed to Tobudobutsu-koen station where there was a traditional revelry house, where karaoke, food and drink were piled on. It was that evening that I was finally introduced to sake (the drink, not the fish), and as part of some shameless egging on by the rest of the party I ended up drinking a little more speedily than usual (which would have some unpleasant repercussions for my head the following morning). It was an evening of much laughter and chat, both in English and Japanese as my confidence in speaking rose with every beer, and all in all an amazingly fun night.

But my word, my head the next day…

Week 2!

Pete here!

The second week (June 7-11) has been my trial-runs for the English classes. Both Erica and Louise have monitored me and given helpful advice for all the classes, and have given me sheets containing student profiles and what they have generally taught each year.

Tuesday, June 8 was a sad day as it was time to say goodbye to Louise; it was her time to fly back to New Zealand, but she will be back in August for the Wado World Cup! Hurrah!

The biggest test of the week has been the Friday, my first day on my own. Thursday and Wednesday have been with Erica, so if I was going wrong anywhere she could step in and take control of the class again; she was a safety net. No such thing on Friday: it was just me. Thankfully, although terrified I managed to get the kids enthused with my phonetics warm-up, which involves them pulling a lot of faces and making a lot of noise!

Saturday Erica and I went to the Kanto Regional High School Karate Championships in the former 1964 Gymanastics Olympic Arena in Komazawa Olympic Memorial Park, Tokyo, meeting Richard there too as he was on the staff. This was a good chance to see the difference in both the level of competition, and the method of organization for the event. Needless to say I was blown away by both. The quality of kata is beautiful to watch and the clean open fighting style of Japanese kumite a welcome difference to that of some regional competitions I have been to in my past.

Unfortunately, Richard’s school (who we came to cheer) was knocked out in their first rounds to some very skilled opposition, but we got a photo opportunity afterwards to mark the occasion.

Richard also introduced me to the Deputy Editor of JKFan Magazine, a goju practitioner. We had a good talk (her English is great!), and have set the scene for some good things to happen in the future.

After 1pm Erica and I decided to head back to the train (not before stopping by a really good Hawaiian-style bar for some food and ice cream), then headed to the evening’s training where she was beaten up more for leaving next week (if that’s what you get then I’m staying!).

Seiritsu's 36th Cultural Festival

Louise here,

On Sunday Richard Mosdell (internship director) invited Erica and I to the school he teaches at, Seiritsu Gakuen Junior & Senior High School. All weekend the school had its cultural festival. The first and second year students set up stalls and entertainment in their home rooms, while various performances were put on in the middle of the school, on a stage on the school's tennis courts.

Seiritsu's cultural festival: main stage

Erica and I wandered around the school a bit, and had a go at a quiz that we didn't understand either the questions or answers (luckily it was multi-choice, so we could point and grunt). Strangely enough we didn't do very well. We also met Nick Smith, a turbaned, fortune-telling international teacher. My fortune was 'Fix your uniform', and I'm still waiting for inspiration about what it means.

We watched some very interesting hip hop on the main stage (one routine was done to the theme music of 'Pirates of the Caribbean'). Then came the event we'd all been waiting for: Richard's karate club demonstration. Five girls performed Empi, a Shotokan kata similar Wado's Wanshu. Then after a rather amusing demonstration of kumite rules and how to get penalised, two kumite bouts were refereed by Richard. Finally, they demonstrated board-breaking, Richard finishing it with a flying side kick and a spinning roundhouse kick.

Richard in full flight

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

Northern Tokyo Taikai

Being the Intern, I was kindly invited by Richard Sensei to compete in the 42nd Northern Tokyo Taikai which was held at the Takinogawa Community Center on Monday 3rd November 3. I would be competing as the third fighter in the men's kumite team made up of graduates from Seiritsu High School, of which Richard Sensei is the head coach. The competition is reputed to be one of the oldest karate contest in Japan, so it’s great to be able to compete in it!

Early start
The plan was to meet Richard Sensei at Omiya station for 7:30am so that we could catch the train to the venue. This meant that I had to depart from Wado (my nearest station) at 6:42am – a challenge in itself as the last few times I’ve tried to get such an early train I've failed miserably!

I arrived at Kuki station with about 10 minutes to spare until me train to Omiya would arrive; I bought my ticket and went through the barrier. My iPod at first stopped me from noticing the huge crowd of people gathering around the station staff. Once I’d noticed the crowd, it didn’t take me long to realise that all the trains were delayed due to some sort of accident. The electronic notice board was showing that Kuki was still waiting for the 6.22am train to Omiya; this meant that my line was already delayed by about 30 minutes. No trains were running in or out of the station on any of the lines so I was effectively stuck at Kuki. I buried my head into my Harry Potter book and turned my iPod back on, the 6.22am train eventually turned up at 7.26am, needless to say that I was going to be late!.

I emailed Richard and got directions; I was to take the Keihin Tohoku line from Akabane station a few stops to Kaminakazato station, which is right next to the community center where the competition was being held. I arrived at about 8.20am. It had taken me nearly two hours to take a 40 minute train ride! Lawrence kindly walked back to the station to collect me and we made our way to the venue. We met Kikuchi Sensei from Shiramizu on route who was one of the many officials at today's tournament, we had a quick chat and then Lawrence and I sneaked in a side entrance to the competition before the masses were allowed in.

Set up
Had I been on time, I would have helped to set up the competition. However it was almost completed by the time I got there. I was introduced to some of the Seirtsu students and graduates by Richard Sensei and I got a feel for the hall. There were six areas marked out on the floor with tape and the front of the hall was lined with tables for the many officials.

Opening Ceremony
This was pretty standard, the usual bows, oaths and speeches were made. I was pleased to see that they didn't individually introduce all 60 officials because we'd have been there all day!

Kata
With kumite taking place in the afternoon and only one student from Seiritsu competing in kata, we had a chilled out morning trying to decide who's kata was the best on each area before the officials decided. Shun Tanaka from Seiritsu ended up in the final of men's kata and narrowly missed winning by 1 flag.

(Richard here: Shun Tanaka is a Seiritsu graduate who has won the All-Japan Handicap Karate Championships for kata 4x and for kumite 3x! Shun has a truncated right arm, but he is so dynamic one quickly doesn't notice, and he is more than capable of competing in regular competitions.)

Lunch break
During the lunch break, I got changed and practised a few drills with Richard Sensei. I was informed that Lawrence was the back-up fighter for our team, in case I got injured and couldn't continue! I wasn’t really sure how to take this news, was I likely to get injured?

Kumite Opening Ceremony and Demo
Again, this was pretty standard. One thing that stood out was that the Japanese national anthem was sung by one of the officials, rather than just playing it from a CD player.

After the ceremony, we watched a demonstration from the famous Sadaharu Fujimoto Sensei, of the Kokusai KarateDo Shoubukai association (shotokan). Who after a performance of Seishan kata, was demonstrating various breaking techniques against wooden boards and bottles. Maybe the skill and conditioning behind the techniques was lost on me, but I wasn't particularly impressed by the demonstration.

(Richard here: Fujimoto Sensei became famous outside of Japan when he was included in the 1973 groundbreaking documentary Budo, the Art of Killing. And I, in comparison to Carl, was very impressed with the break skills of this 78 year old(!) because he based them on movements directly from different kata. For example, breaking off the top of a small bottle cap with a reverse downward and backward finger strike while not looking, aka testicle popper as per some kata, made me squishmishly (ooh, that's gotta hurt!) impressed.

Kumite
The men's team kumite would be starting straight after the opening ceremony and demonstration, and our team was first up. I was reminded by Richard Sensei that Seiritsu's grads were the defending champions so we had to win, so no pressure!

Team Kumite
Our team was Ryota, Shun and I. Ryota was up first for us and he won convincingly 6-0. I was the second fighter, I traded for a while throwing punches which landed but none scored, my opponent scored with two punches. I threw a mawashigeri jodan but my opponent leaned back out of range, so I immediately threw the same kick again, this time it landed perfectly and I felt as though I had broken my foot on his head guard! I won the bout 3-2. Shun, our third fighter didn’t have to fight as the other team only had two fighters.

Round 2, I was third fighter this time. The first two fighters from my team had already won their fights, both with 6-0 wins! So my fight was just a formality. Richard Sensei suggested I worked on getting my hands going and not to use kicks. My opponent didn’t put up much of a fight so I won the round 4-0.

Round 3, This round was for a place in the finals. Shun was up first, he fought hard and managed to secure a 3-3 draw. Next up was Ryota, unfortunately his opponent was faster and ended up winning the bout 0-6. This meant that I would have to win my fight 6-0 to draw the team match. My hands still weren’t doing what I would have liked them to do, I kept letting my opponent come too close, even though I had a reach advantage. This meant that he was able to get a few punches in to get 3 points. I managed two points in response, with another just on the buzzer that was disallowed. I lost 3-5. We would have to settle for the reparcharge.

Before this fight started, Kikuchi Sensei (who had finished on his area) came over and told me what I was doing wrong in my previous fights. I made sure to take the feedback onboard and not make the same mistakes in my last fight.

Repercharge
I was particularly annoyed at myself for not fighting the way I should in the last three rounds. With this in mind, I was going to make sure I redeemed myself in my last fight. My two teammates were up first and won their bouts. I scored three times with counter punches to my oponents head. With a few seconds to go my opponent scored a point. I retaliated with another scoring body punch and closed the fight on the buzzer with a well placed mawashigeri jodan (round house kick to the head). The final score was 7-1. We had got a respectable 3rd place.

After the team matches, I watched the remainder of the Individual kumite. Shun got to the finals of his division and the match went to sudden death, his opponent got a body kick just before Shun countered with a head punch so he ended up with 2nd place.

I also watched the Seiritsu high school girl's kumite with interest but I didn't see all the fights because I was hitching a ride home with Kikuchi Sensei, so I left the competition half way through the division.

Overall I thought the tournament was good, the standard of the competitors was mixed as a lot of dojo entered beginners. I wasn't happy with the way I fought but I've picked up on loads of bad habits that I was doing in my fighting that I didn't realise. This is mostly because of the on the spot feedback from Richard and Kikuchi Sensei and the sharp camera work of Lawrence.

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About the competition
Like most Japanese tournaments that I've entered, there were more than enough officials, I counted 60 during the opening ceremony. On top of that there were approximately 50 volunteers too.

There were 6 areas in the hall and a separate warm-up area. I would only have two criticisms, all the areas should have mats laid down and the even shouldn’t have two ‘opening ceremonies’. I think the second point in particular would have shortened the day somewhat, especially since the tournament overran its schedule.