There is something that I am truly happy with and proud of
at our dojo these days. Our karate classes are filled with enthusiastic young
(and old) people! We sometimes have 16+ students. Most of them are white belts.
Our dojo used to be top-heavy for a long time, and had almost no steady young
white belts for years. I feel that we now have a bright future again!
When godan Jim Sagawa in the San Francisco Bay Area agreed
to visit our dojo to lead a practice, we the black belts started talking about
him and his visit often in class. I remember clearly how students reacted. Everyone
got (even more) enthusiastic and wanted to practice with Jim and learn from
him. We set the date of Saturday, March 8. When his practice drew closer, I
started having a dream of him and his practice almost every night for nearly
two weeks. I told him about it when he came to Redding on Friday, and gave Brad and myself a special session (thank you!) a night before his open practice. He was amused
with my dreams. During the session, he answered many of our questions about
irimi, sabaki, sen-no-sen and so on. I asked him to show me the application of
one movement in Bassai. The next moment I was flat on my stomach and tapping
the floor.
Jim’s practice was a huge success. We had 21 participants (4
black belts and 17 white belts) with three from Chico Dojo and four from
Westside Dojo. Thank you Ben Chester and Scott Kingsbury for bringing your students
with you! Jim covered many interesting and exciting things in his 3.5 hour
practice. I will leave the details of it to Brad’s report. At one point, we
worked on sabaki. His focus was on how effectively black belts could practice
for themselves while helping junior members with their own practice. Great!! I
love it! We witnessed Jim’s awesome throws and torite techniques demonstrated
on black belts. White belts loved them!
We were all content with the hard practice when we had
mokuso and rei. After the group photo taken by our photographer Lynette, we
were ready for a fun time. (Click on “Image galleries” to view the photo.) Twenty-one of
participants and their families enjoyed early dinner with Jim and his wife Karen
at a local restaurant. I have heard someone say before, "When you enjoy a meal together, you are now friends." That is exactly what I saw there.
I am very grateful that everything went quite well as I had
hoped for months. White belts got inspired! Black belts got much-needed help
from Jim, one of SKA's top seniors, on their kata, sabaki and jiyu-kumite. We missed brown belts this
time, but I know that at least one brown belt in Sacramento
(Yana!) was at the practice in spirit. Many
thanks to Jim and Karen for coming all the way to Redding to help us. It was an awesome practice!
