This year has been a crazy year. In fact 2019 was a roller coaster as well. Let me go back and catch you up.
2019 saw some major changes in my martial arts affiliations, teaching and training. Since January of 2019 I had panned to visit Okinawa and attend the Okinawakan Anniversary seminars and celebrations, the Okinawakan was celebrating 65 years, along with the Dentokan and Yushikan both celebrating 25 years each. As the year progressed, I traveled and taught quiet a bit throughout the country, as President of Okinawakan International and Vice President of Dentoakn, I was pretty busy bringing in new members and spreading the teachings I received from the Hombu Dojo in Okinawa. We did take some time in after the Baltimore seminar for some sight seeing and then it was off to Illinois for a one day seminar. Even though we were busy we did take 4 days to take a family trip up to Niagara Falls, and on the way back visited the Buffalo zoo.
I hosted the 2019 annual gasshuku in July and we held rank testing and had a good weekend of training between Hobbs Sensei and myself. We even had a Uechiryu section at this years event. The week after the Gasshuku the landlord of the property the dojo was in, thought we did such a good job remodeling that he wanted to expand his business into the space. We ended classes in the large commercial space in August after 5 years, it was a beautiful dojo and I was very sad to see it go and even sadder to lose all the money invested gone. We tried to find a comparable space but nothing worked out. We had to move classes back to the old Yushikan on the back of my families property.
As August pushed on I was having some disagreements with Okinawa over money, mainly the fact that I had just lost the dojo and the high costs of affiliation fees, on top of the coming travel, seminar, and grading costs were jut not doable at the point in time. I tried to make arrangements to pay the fees in Okinawa when I arrived, needless to say it came to a point where had to make a decision that was best for me and my students. I resigned from the Okinawakan Hombu dojo and resigned as president of Okinawakan International and dissolved that organization. Shortly after that I also resigned from the Dentokan after 21 years as Vice President. My decision to leave Okinawakan was a personal one and was not an easy choice, Nakamoto Sensei and I had a good relationship for several years and I was sorry that the decision had to be made.
I was unsure what would happen in Okinawa, given that i had just resigned and turned down a chance to grade for a rank, I may never get the chance to test for again, but my students and I went to Okinawa anyway. My wife and I took several students with us, 2 from my personal dojo, 1 from the Illinois dojo and 3 from the Baltimore dojo. We had a great time sight seeing and training for 2 weeks with Josei Yogi Sensei in Konan Ryu (Uechi) and Matayoshi Kobudo. We also rained and received some excellent shodo from Tetsuhiro Hokama Sensei, we spent the majority of our time training everyday for 4 hours with Kenei Shimabukuro Sensei and Hiroshi Ganaha Sensei. I have to say that it was a great time and I received the most detailed and comprehensive training in Dento Gojuryu and Kobudo that I have ever received. I was appointed as a Shibu Dojo for both Shimabukuro Sensei and Yogi Sensei.
There was an unfortunate incident that transpired in Okinawa and after returning, one of the branch dojo were not invited to continue on the path forward with us. In October I landed in Indiana, went home got a little sleep, swapped luggage and we headed off to see the younger of our twins get married in Tennessee. After Okinawa, turning around and going straight to Tennessee for a weekend, Amber and I were tired but classes resumed on that Monday and we kept at it. Later in the month we were back on the east coast for the east coast gasshuku and rank testing, we spent a few extra days on the east coast taking our granddaughter to an aquarium in New Jersey.
The remainder of the year we spent working on the material learned in Okinawa and enjoying the holiday's with family. I did re-organize the International Karate Kobudo Association that I had founded in 2016 and re-named it Sekai Budo Hozonkai or World Martial Arts Preservation Society. This was done to provide an avenue to further not only karate and kobudo, but also as a means to provide instruction and certification in Jujutsu and Iaido. Having spent over 40 years training in the various fighting arts of Okinawa and Japan, I thought this would provide me with the venue to pursue those endeavors and support my students.
2020 came in fairly normal and I began planning the annual gasshuku with guest instructors from Okinawa, but as the year progressed everyone knows what happened, we experienced a world wide pandemic that had us on lock down for several months. This lock down saw several of our branch dojo shut down and lose their training spaces. I went fro 50 students to 10, some of the branch dojo have been able to survive training outside but as a whole 2020 has shut down several dojo all over the world.
I cancelled all of my travel and the annual gasshuku has been pushed back several times, this year we will do a one day event and offer zoom sessions, but it won't be the same. On a bright note, Ganaha sensei is committed to coming to the USA in 2021. One of the best things to come out of the lock downs and pandemic is the zoom seminars that have happened. I have been able to take classes with Sakumoto, Fujimoto, Hokama, I was able to attend 3 days of training at Uechi SummerFest, I have a few more seminars scheduled with Okinawan masters and I have been attending weekly classes with George Mattson Sensei. Truly a silver lining in an other wise crap year.
Now that I have given you a brief synopsis of the last two years, i can say that I am almost complete with my duel bachelors degree program and I hope to be able to get back to writing more. I have several partial books, one for kobudo, one for jujutsu, two on Gojuryu and one on Uechiryu that are all at various stages of completion, I hope that I can get them done. I will try to add new content to the blog on a more regular basis.
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