Your Japanese word of the week is...

"kirei". It means pretty or beautiul. Feel free to toss the word around to your lover or friend or friend-with-benefits or whathaveyou. Do not, however, feel as free to toss around the word "kirai" when talking about your life partner's aesthetics. That word happens to mean hate and it would also happen to have you life partner-less. A malfunction of the brain-mouth connection wouldn't be very pretty. Once again, why two polar opposite words must sound so similar is beyond me. At some point I will say "Wow, I really think that pollution is gorgeous!!". Graceful, no??

But how ungraceful I may be was in rather stark contrast to some of the grace I witnessed at the Wado-Kai National Competition over the weekend. It was two days filled with kata, kumite, wins, losses, and all around learning through observation.

"The 43rd Wado-Kai National Karate Competition"

Saturday's events took place at the rather large Urayasu Gym, conveniently (and distractingly) located across the street from Tokyo Disneyland. I watched kumite all day mostly because my lack of Japanese understanding meant I didn't know there was a seperate gym where the kata competition was located. Of course, the file of people wandering up the staircase outside should have tipped me off but............ well........ I won't make any excuses haha........

On sunday, the finals were at the impressive Nippon Budokan (that the Budokan in the picture above) in the heart of Tokyo. An extremely thoughtfully designed place surrounded by a nice park, it was a great place for the best of the Wado-Kai to show their wares.

It's pretty impossibly to describe all that I saw but it was eye opening in that there is much for me to learn both about competing and about being at a level to compete comfortable. But one thing that's for sure is that without competing, you really have no idea where you stand. You can volley a ball or deke a puck all day long but without playing a game, you don't know how useful or effective it will be. Competition improves the breed, and so shall the improvement begin.

Above would be Arakawa Sensei dismantling his opponent in his Team Kumite match.

And this is Furuhashi Sensei enroute to yet another of his many Wado National Kata gold medal wins.