Your Japanese word of the week is...

"omedetou". It means "congratulations". "Omedetougozaimasu" also works, with that last part adding an extra bit of politeness and emphasis. And who am I congratulating?? Mr. Mike Spain.

You might remember I mentioned him last December. He's an American who lives in Thailand and, wanting to join the Wadokai, he visisted Japan early last December to do just that as well as practice. In the Wadokai, being a member is not really a problem. But in Thailand, where Wado karate is rather under-represented, Mike wanted to have his own dojo join as a branch dojo. However doing so requires at least one member of the dojo to be a certified Wadokai shodan (black belt). So he came back this week and, on March 2nd, challenged and passed this black belt test in Tokyo (mine being a different exam because it was a different "region"). That's Mike in the dogi at the right of the picture. That's Arakawa Sensei beside me on the left of the picture.

I hope I don't have to point out which one is "me" haha............ although I just realised that having said that, I've just set myself up for a bunch of comments asking "Which one are you Lawrence??".......

Or...... "What country are you in??"....... "Who are you?!?"....... the list goes on haha...... Annnyyywaayyy....

So really, all I did all last week was help Mike prepare. This was actually a really good chance for me to try my hand at teaching though. As I said last week, while basic form is important, there are a lot of elements of karate (and indeed any sport) that I call "intangible" and being able to demonstrate/model as well as explain these elements in words isn't easy to do. And since I've spent nearly all my time since July learning these things, it was great to have a chance to switch my thinking and take a stab at teaching.

But Mike worked hard all week so a big "omedetou" to him for passing! =)

I'm sort of taking this week off because the dojo has kyu tests (kyu's are all the ranks prior to black belt) so there's no classes. I'm using the time to get errands done.

More exciting than that, though, is Peter, who wants to come back to Tokyo again this weekend. But I will eventually visit Peter's town of Aizu Wakamatsu and see for myself if it's really as boring as he makes it sound haha..........

Later though, since it's still cold up there haha..... til then......