It was Sensei's 70th birthday last night (on Christmas Day no less). It’s truly amazing how 'genki' he is for a 70-year-old! I’ve never seen someone so fast, strong, and flexible – it seems almost an impossibility for someone his age! Even now when I watch him move, demonstrating applications and takedowns it’s as if part of my brain is telling me that I’m being fooled. It’s an optical illusion! Thick, stocky seventy-year-old men simply cannot move that way.

I think the honbu dojo was a little intimidated by the upcoming event but I took the liberty of trying to make him a chocolate brownie cake (see above). But, with my rather limited baking experience, and without an oven I was left trying to produce a cake using our toaster/grill - a real challenge! All things considered, I think it worked out OK in the end. I covered up the charcoal patches with chocolate icing and even managed to ice it with a Happy Birthday Sensei message on top. Despite being a little ‘crunchy’ in bits, it can't have tasted too bad since it got polished off pretty quickly after training. We turned off all the lights and sang Sensei happy birthday and he made a wish before using those big lungs of his to blow out all the candles in one breath. He seemed to like the cake too explaining to me that he doesn't really like white (sponge) cakes that much but thought my chocolate cake was “very good”. Note to self – Sensei is a chocolate lover at heart.

Since arriving in Naha, the honbu-dojo ‘gang’ has really taken me under their wing. This isn’t always easy with newcomers. Dojo ‘newbies’ have the potential to really disrupt things – breaking dojo etiquette, bringing training ‘back to the basics’ and generally wrecking the vibe. This is especially the case among people who have been training together for a long time. As a junior black belt, and the only female, this was surely even more true for me. In this respect, I feel very lucky to have been so warmly adopted as part of the honbu dojo and have come to really admire and respect my senior ‘sempai’ who train here.

Kumamoto-Sensei
Kumamoto-Sensei is Sensei’s chief instructor in the honbu dojo. He’s also a bit like the parent to us all, ‘looking after the kids’ when Sensei’s away. When I first met him he struck me as the ‘quite and reserved’ type, but, I’ve since come to know him better over some hot awamori (traditional Okinawan spirits) and gyoza some nights after training. And as a side note, unlike the men on the mainland, this Okinawan knows how to hold his liquor.

Alessandro-Sensei
Alessandro-Sensei is a chirpy, warm-hearted Italian with a good sense of humor and flirtatious nature. He's fluent in Japanese, Italian and English, and like many others in the honbu dojo, his language skills really make me aware of my ignorance as a solely English speaking Westerner. While Alessandro-Sensei claims to be “no good” at English his disarming nature and charismatic expressions make him easy to talk to and never seems to detract from his ability to share a good joke.

One afternoon I ran into him in the car park of a supermarket down the street. While his wife was doing the shopping he was sitting in his car conditioning his hands on a 'portable' rock (keitai ishi) – a stone that he keeps under the front seat! I suppose it goes a long way to explaining why his hands have started to look so much like Sensei's and when I made this comment to him I couldn’t help but notice him ‘glow’ a little at the thought.

I think the thing that amazes me most about the guy is his constant energy. He trains every day, teaching kids classes at three different dojos and then trains with us again in the evenings. Even after training for 5 or 6 hours straight he just doesn’t seem to slow down. Whether it’s beating himself with wooden conditioning sticks or doing 100s of push-ups at a time with his legs wedged up on the weights bench – everything is done full speed and power. On occasion when he takes the senior classes we often find ourselves doing an endless array of odd and interesting exercises of his own creation - from new ways to condition our bodies (and partner’s), to human Kongo-Ken and floor-polishing push-up techniques.

Brent
A fellow Aussie from Newcastle, Brent has been training at the Honbu dojo pretty seriously since 2005. As one of the higher-ranking senior grades, his years inside the dojo show in his strong and heavy techniques and at times, his slightly 'too effective' bunkai applications. Brent tends to keep to himself and his stern and serious nature could otherwise be interpreted as ‘standoffish’ by those who don’t know him. In truth his dedication, focus and passion for training is nothing short of inspiring for me. In my time training here, I’m yet to see him train at less than 100%. His long working hours teaching English and late nights at the dojo show in the occasional dark circles under his eyes and furrowed brow, yet tiredness never seems to slow him down. And, on nights when I’m feeling tired or run down, he serves as a reminder of why I’m here – a reminder to “go hard or go home!”

These days, Brent and I often get paired up together for applications or forearm conditioning (ude-tanren) and in truth, I sometimes feel a small part of me groan for I know I’m in for a work out and I’m going home with some bruises. With arms like baseball bats and hard, heavy punching and kicking techniques, training with Brent always makes me feel like a white-belt again. Yet, I have a lot of respect and admiration for the guy and learn a lot from our sessions together. While some nights I might wish I had a ‘softer’ partner, I know that training with Brent will accelerate my learning and if I can keep it up (and if he doesn’t kill me first) I’ll be all the stronger for it.

Vincent
Vincent was one of the first to befriend me at the honbu dojo. Despite claims that his English is poor, I feel that Vincent seems to understand me more than most… or maybe it’s just that one of his favorite word “exactly” makes me feel this way. In any case, his warmth and sense of humor add to his disarming nature making him an easy guy to joke with and confide in.

Most nights at training I can hear Vincent’s stomach gurgling from across the room. I’m still not sure if it’s trying to tell him it’s hungry, or reprimanding him for liver abuse - an unfortunate side-affect of being a ‘slender blond’ working at a “snack” (host/hostess bar) each night after training. Despite being routinely hung-over, Vincent never seems to miss a day of training. His dedication shows in his big handwriting which dominates the pages of the dojo journal – a daily record of all our names.

I think among Westerners there's a bit of stereo-type regarding martial arts masters. In movies at least, they always seem to be stern, serious and maybe even slightly sadistic old men. Jaded, harsh and unforgiving.

Sensei is a hard man to capture in words, but he's definitely none of the above. He's kind of taken on a larger-than-life character for me and many others. If I were to describe him, I'd have to say he definitely has a certain ‘energy’ about him – calmness? simplicity? humility? zen? It's also hard describing the feeling of having him ‘demonstrate’ a technique – such frightening power and speed, yet always with such gentleness and control. You know you're in safe hands (so to speak).

Perhaps more than these things, when I think of Sensei, I see his cheery grin – a warm and childish smile that's contagious. When he steps into the dojo each night he takes the time to share this smile with each of us – like a father looking proudly at each of his children.

In appearance, the short and stocky 70-year-old, sports a thick torso and hobbits feet (with toes like fingers) well beyond Japanese sizing. His gentle hands and forearms have grown thick and calloused over the years. The photo above really doesn’t capture the current gnarled state of Sensei’s hands, which now resemble the very rock he strikes daily in the dojo.

Paradoxically, while Sensei’s hands have come to look more and more like his rock, the rock itself has grown smooth and oiled from years of use – qualities of each seeming to rub off on the other. Above the rock also sits a ‘Sensei-level’ patch of concrete (once white) that’s grown dark and smooth and almost invites you test out your back-fist (or at least your pain threshold). These quirky parts of the Honbu dojo seem to be as much a part of Sensei as his hands and feet. They're the simple objects that have shared more time with him than any of his students or close friends.

* Click here for Español.

The Honbu dojo is quite small with only a handful of black belts regularly training and a few (brave) kyu grades on occasion. It’s something that surprised me at first given the dojo’s famed reputation. Another thing that caught me off guard when I first arrived is how truly international the student base is – there are students from America, Switzerland, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, Israel and surprisingly few from Okinawa or mainland Japan. Add to this the almost weekly influx of visitors from around the word – England, Guatemala, France, Germany, Holland, Spain... With the constant supply of people from different styles and countries this melting pot of a dojo makes for some interesting training sessions and it’s fair share of language confusion.

Training runs from 8-10pm every night but usually kicks off a little late and runs even later. On normal training nights, the few of us without work commitments (or possessive partners) often stay late to work on corrections, practice sparring or applications, or do a few more reps with the metal clogs (tetsu geta) or gripping jars (nigiri-game). On nights when Sensei’s feeling particularly ‘genki’ - it’s not uncommon for us to find ourselves training through until 11.30/12pm and sometimes staying even later while he tells us stories about Kanryo Higaonna and Chojun Miyagi’s era. In any case, my life training at the Honbu dojo seems to have become a little nocturnal and even when I get home before midnight, I find myself needing at least another hour or so to slow my brain down to speed capable of sleep.

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