Year end practice! And Happy New Year!

Photo from Arakawa Sensei's blog

On Friday, December 23 (a national holiday), over 300 Shiramizu students assembled at a local recreation center gym to participate in the last practice of the year. At the end of the practice was the annual '1000-punches' (zenbontsuki). Not only was it a great practice for everyone, but those students who did well in competitions, from local to the national championships to the Asian championships, received special gifts of recognition.

Sensei's blog

Afterwards many of the core adults had some good fun at the year-end party (bonenkai), a very important event for all companies, schools and of course karate clubs in Japan. I'm sure everyone have many bonenkai to attend due to different commitments. (This is different from the shinenkai, the beginning of year party in just a few weeks - sweet!)

It's truly been a unique year, very topsy-turvy from the triple disaster on March 13, to the 2nd full-time dojo opening in Satte City, to multiple interns coming and going, to the internship being reset again for 2012.

As things have gotten back to normal, I think it's amazing how Shiramizu has continued to grow and be vibrant, both in getting new members, in current members deepening their traditional knowledge of Wadoryu karate plus in members now growing up to be adults who are achieving great things in different competitive leagues (high school, university and adult) plus moving up the dan ranks.

For visitors coming to sleepy Sugito City where the head dojo is, about one hour north of Tokyo, probably no one would ever think such a small place could produce so many members creating a vibrant, active club run by professional karate instructors. As I think about all the professional instructors I have known over the past 25 years, while many have had one or two very good strengths as an instructor, no one has been as well rounded as Arakawa Sensei, nor as consistent day after day, year after year, at teaching and promoting, not to mention event hosting, in such a positive manner. I myself as a pro coach concede this fact, but that's why I still learn from Arakawa Sensei, and that's why so many people come to visit the dojo. No one is perfect, but the infectious energy for karate here at Shiramizu is great to experience.

Happy New Year to our many, many readers. We wish you all a great 2012. Look for the intern blog to again be very active over the new few months. Plus we also look forward to all our visitors again showing up, which I think starts with quite a few people coming from Canada in just a few weeks.

Sincerely,

Richard

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.

忘年会 Bonenkai!

Group picture (from Arakawa Sensei's blog)

Erica here. I meant to write this before the year ended, but here we are! Happy New Year everyone! At the end of last year on December 19, there was a Shiramizu bonenkai (forget the year gathering end of the year party) at Uta Min (魚民) restaurant, beside Sugito Takanodai station.

Since alcohol was being served, only people over the age of 20 were allowed to attend, so most of the participants were adult students, parents of the students and of course, all the Sensei. The venue was a restaurant that included ‘all you can drink’ beverages, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic. Everyone was in a merry mood and had plenty to drink. We played bingo and everyone was excited because there were some great prizes which included a Sony mp3 player, a coffee maker, a very popular scale that not only measures your weight but the percentage of body fat among other things and various smaller prizes like socks and Shiramizu towels.

Near the end, we all had to stand up and give a short speech about how we did this year and what we hope to achieve next year. This took a little while because there were about 40 of us. It was a very enjoyable night!

Shiramizu Bonnenkai

Carl here...

Shiramizu Bonnenkai
The end of year party was held at Manya restaurant in Kasukabe. This party was also held in celebration of Mr. Hirai’s recent wedding. Approximately 50 people turned up for this all you can drink meal. After everyone settled in, mingled a bit and sampled some of the delicious food on offer, Ueno-san started off the game of bingo. Everyone at the party was asked to bring a prize worth 1000yen or less, so that no one would leave empty handed.

Ueno, assisted by Mori drew out all the numbers and kindly shouted out the numbers in Japanese and English.

Kikuchi Sensei thought that the purple make-up bag that he won contained something special, so he kept rummaging through all the packaging until he finally realised that the bag was the prize!

This is my bingo card. I was obviously doing very well! I ended up winning a box of gravel. I was told that you have to put them in the bath, rather like a mini spa, but it was still gravel!

After everyone had won a prize we carried on with the general drinking and merriment until the start of the speeches. Apparently the bingo game slightly over ran the schedule so the speeches were to be short and to the point. Even so, the speech was still to be a reflection of the past year and also what you would like to achieve in 2009 (hansei and hofu).


I challenge you...!
Suzuki Sensei’ speech was very good, with lots of energy and thankfully we had Richard Sensei translating it for us. He basically said that he’s 50-odd years old, but he’s still entering the Wadokai Karate Kanto Area Taikai (Kanto Championships - March 2009), and he challenges all the other Shiramizu instructors to follow his lead. I’m not sure about the others, but I know that both Yamazaki Sensei and Yoshihara Sensei have risen admirably to the challenge and will be entering both kata and kumite divisions despite both ladies being kata players!



Me and Yoshihara Sensei
During the party Yoshihara sensei asked me to help her with her kumite since I’ve started coaching** her daughter Kana when we have the time, she’s already improved significantly!

**This translates as me trying to beat up Kana at every opportunity!

My speech went something like this (only in Japanese):

Good evening!
Arakawa Sensei and Ueno-san, thank you very much for changing the venue for the party.

((The party was originally going to be at the same place as Arakawa Sensei’s masters party!))

The food at the last place wasn’t very nice.
Ueno-san, thank you for the English instructions for the party.

((Ueno took the trouble of translating all the information about the party into English for the Shiramizu English speakers!))

This year has been very busy because I handed over control of my dojo in England to a committee, and now I’m worried about it!
It’s great that we came to Japan this year.
We’re very lucky to be training in karate at the Shiramizu dojo, Thank you Arakawa sensei.
I always do my best in karate, but I still have to work on Junzuki, chinto kata and seishan kata. I hope the instructors will keep teaching me.
In 2009:
I’ll continue to do my best in karate.
I’ll do my best in Japanese karate competitions and do my best with my English dojo.
...oh and visit Kyoto!
Thank you and goodnight!*

The speech seemed to go down well, with a few laughs. Only the gaijin got the ‘thank you and goodnight’ skit but I thought it was a nice touch anyway! Obviously Amy and I had worked on our speeches beforehand, we read them rather than spoke them but everyone seemed to like the effort that we’d put in all the same.

After all the speeches were done we all got together for the group photo and then everyone went their own ways in smaller groups.


The party after the main party is apparently called a ‘Niji-Kai’, so Team Gaijin (Richard / Lawrence / Carl / Amy) went to a local karaoke joint for a Gaijin NiJiKai.