Warrior Spirit

So, what do you and your friends do when they all turn/turned 40? I've got an idea, pack your sleeping bags and pillows, drive down to NY, have a sleep over at your dear friend's apartment, go down to St Marks Street and get some ink! I highly recommend it. Here's what I got-

It means warrior spirit or essence of warrior. At first I thought it just meant 'warrior' but upon further research I found out it actually means Warrior spirit which is what I originally wanted. I'm very happy with it. Its on my leg and as soon as its healed nicely I'll post a picture of it.

There's a 4th day of November too?

Well, I've already blown the NaBloPoMo daily blogging thingy. Why? cause I forgot, thats why. I have no good reason. But, I will continue to blog daily thru the month just because I said I would. DOH!

every day for a month

I'm taking on the NaBloPoMo challange. Thanks for the invite BBM! I'm certainly not a daily blogger but I am up for the challange. Yikes! who knows what I'll be talking about...

finally

So I finally got back to class on Saturday. It felt great. I went to weapons class and reviewed the 5 bo kata I knew, then to regular class at noon. The warm up alone almost knocked me on my butt. We did mostly kata after that which was fine by me. We did all 5 kihon kata as a group then broke into smaller groups by rank to work on whatever kata we needed to. I worked with another shodan who has come back after several years hiatus. I remember her from when my son was a little white belt and she was on the STORM team. So we worked on Kusanku Dai. I know this kata pretty well now and soon I'll be starting Gojushiho. That one looks really complicated to me, but I will need it for Nidan. Lots of weird angles and new moves and its really long (54 count, which is what the name translates to...eek!)
My muscles were so sore on sunday but a good sore. I've missed that. :)

Karate movies

I saw a cool movie last night. It was called Karate Bullfighter and it starred Sonny Chiba. I love Sonny Chiba movies. I have a collection of them. Streetfighter, Return of Streetfighter, even Streetfighters last Revenge (horrible movie) Also, Sister Streetfighter which stars Sue Shiomi and Sonny Chiba. That one is my favorite. Shiomi is amazing. One of the best things about these movies is the fake blood. So hilarious! That and the sound effects.
I love that Chiba was in Kill Bill, too. Anyway, in Karate Bullfighter, it was really cool to see Chiba and his student in the film doing Paipuren (or a variation) which is the White Crane kata I learned in association camp this summer. So there I am, all by myself, watching this movie and totally giddy saying out loud...I KNOW THAT!! I LEARNED THAT!!
so there you go...that is a brief snapshot of my sunday evening. If you ever get a chance to watch some of these, especially the Streetfighter series, I highly recommend them. Not only to see the expertise of these martial artists, but to have a good laugh at the same time.

I have been away from the dojo for about a month. Its killing me. Because of family issues and the need for me to be a presence at home I've had to prioritize. And of course family comes first. However, things are getting better, and Frotoe needs some karate in a major way. I feel like a blob. Mentally and physically. I haven't even been practicing much at home until this past week. (although I think about karate constantly) I feel like I've lost so much learning time. Uck.

I wanna go to Vegas too!

So next week, Kyoshi, Sensei T, Sensei D, Sensei B are going to Vegas. To some sort of martial arts thingy and expo. They are going to see Penn and Teller. They are also going to go see Ka. Kyoshi has seen it once already and says its just amazing. I've only been to 1 Cirque Du Soleil show up in Boston and it was unbelievable. I would love to see this one. We were standing around after class yesterday talking about their trip and Kyoshi is a little worried that Sensei B might not come back after he sees it. that he might want to stay out there and join the troop. Sensei B is one of the instructors of the Extreme Tricks class (as well as a lot of the traditional classes-he is a 3rd degree) at our dojo and he absolutely defies gravity. He is gonna love it. Now Sensei D, on the other hand, is absolutely GIDDY because they are seeing Penn and Teller.
They are going to have so much fun. Take me with you!!!! And of course we were laughing because the saying "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" will be more like "What happens in Vegas comes back to the Dojo and will spread like wildfire and haunt you for the rest of your life"
I'm so jealous.

Big promotion last weekend

So how cool is this... Our very own Renshi was promoted to 7th Dan over the weekend! Not only that, his title has now been changed to Kyoshi! I wish I could have seen the promotion. A few of the adult students took a road trip down to NJ to watch. I hope someone took video of his demo. They said it was quite impressive. At class last night, he was presented with a framed group of pictures from that night. He was very humble and thankful. and his belt is quite snazzy...red and white with his name embroidered in gold thread. He said its going to be hard getting used to a new title as he's been a Renshi for the past 10 years. Especially for the little ninjas & dragons..they think his actual name was "renshi" so some of them have been calling him Sensei Renshi...heh heh heh now what? Sensei Renshi Kyoshi?
Someone in class last night asked him how many miles he had to run for 7th...he said he had to run all the way down to NJ. ha ha ha. I wonder if he had to do any commando crawls or duck walks...hmmmmm.

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