During the World Tournament in November 2003, we spent 2 weeks in Japan, training at Japanese dojos and enjoying the Japanese culture.
Sempai Goto Yoshiki (3-dan), from New York Shibu, who used to train at our own Sangenjaya-dojo came with 3 other fighters from New York. Du Pree, a Dutchman also training at New York-shibu brought a team of total 5 fighters from Holland. (2 fighters did not participate) As they all came especially for our training, The class contained Kihon and Hokyou-training. After that we advanced with a 40 minutes sparring-class.Å@ Because I thought kumite is the best way for Kyokushinkarateka to become close with each other. Further, as I don't speak anything but Japanese, the explanation of techniques looked very difficult to me. As the fighting class may have been (too) small for this occasion, I specifically asked the black belts and brown belts to participate in the fighting-class. |
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New Yorks Goto-sempai arrived just after Junior-class was finished with & 2 other members of the New York dojo. Zarita-san (black-belt) & Mason-san(brown-belt). Mason-san seemed to have a rib-injury, so he could not join in sparring. As we stand in line to start the training, it seemed only 2 of our dojo-members came. Where was everyone??? Where are the students? Damn! As communication between the instructor and the 2 foreigners seems difficult, what would be the best way to teach them ? As I was still worrying about it, the 5 Oranda-jin entered the dojo. At the same time, the Setagaya-Higashi members entered the dojo one after another. What a relief! When we finished the warming up, and started training there were over 10 persons. After Kihon, we started Hokyou as always with Idou-training from zenkutsu-dachi with 5-geri's and continued these series 10-15 times. Even though it was an unusual situation and therefore tough, the fire kept on burning. And even though everyone is living in different countries, everyone certainly showed the true (same) kyokushin-sprit. |
After Idou-training we started sparring. In a time of 40 minutes we did sparring sessions of 2 minutes. about 20 sessions. I explained to everyone , with translating assistance by Ms. Hashimoto, that the purpose was no too much heat up fighting. Everyone understood that we wanted to prevent injuries and the purpose was to learn from each other by controlled fighting. Howeve, as we are Kyokushin-karateka, we got carried away and the fighting soon became tense. It seems the way of communication was not done by words but indeed done by the fist. We punched with bare hands, and after each fight we smiled and shook hands with each other. Again, Kyokushin-karate showed again how wonderful it can be. Ms Zarita was fighting hard. Someone was hit by Zarita in the face. The high level of fighting by the foreign girl surprised us, also by hitting someone in the face like this.
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After fighting we took pictures with each other and we gave away some Original Dojo T-Shirts as presents. Even though they must have been tired, they told us that they had to leave tomoorow to go training at Kyoto-shibu. What a tough guys! We felt their passion about Kyokushin karate. Even if we had problems in communication in words, we could communicate with our bare hands. Differences in religion, race & culture have no meaning in the larger meaning of Kyokushin-karate. This training confirms again that the organization once set up by only one man, the founder Mas. Oyama's, is the greatest!
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and photographs are taken from: For this report in please check |
