Dojo Remodel

The weekend of Mother’s Day, we began a remodel of the Yushikan dojo. When I re-located the dojo to its current location I set it up quickly so that we could begin training, my wife (Amber) did not much like it from the start. The dojo interior was plain, the walls had a peg hole type paneling up, and I painted it white, I filled it with awards, certificates, trophies and pictures from over the years, and covered up most of the wall space.  I didn’t give it a whole lot of though; I simply wanted a place to train. Over the years there were small changes, the addition of a matted floor, mirrors, and some re-arrangement of the wall coverings.

I spent a lot of last year thinking about how I wanted the dojo to look and what it was that I was looking for in my own training space. What I decided on was that I wanted it to almost transport the students, so they felt that they may have just walked into a dojo on Okinawa to train.

Entrance to the Yushikan and koi pond

With that in mind, we set out to make some changes to the dojo, what I thought would take a mere two weekends of work, turned into three months of construction. Along the way we had some issues that popped up, as with any project, that presented challenges and caused some modifications to the original plans, but I think they turned out for the best.

I got so busy that I forgot to take a real before picture, so I had to search for something to show you and give you an idea of what it looked like.

 

 

As you can see in the background of the photos, the dojo was plain and cluttered with various things from 35 years’ worth of the clutter of my own ego.

What I set out to do with the remodel was to change the dojo to be simpler, more focused on training in karate, with an emphases on training in the way of karate over a life time, I wanted the dojo to reflect things that were relevant to training and not on me and my accolades from over the years. So what you will not find is a single certificate or award hanging on the wall, you will not see a single trophy or medal anywhere, these things have all be banished to the attic.

What you will find on the wall are things that have meaning, old sayings that have been passed down from the ages, historical photographs, some photos from over the years, hand written kanji that were presented to me as gifts by some great karate masters, things that have importance and relevance in training and for enriching the spirit. You will also find hojo undo training equipment, old tools that seem to be missing in most modern dojo.

While my dojo may not be large and we may not have all of the modern conveniences, what we have is a traditional dojo with an atmosphere that revolves around training. The dojo is always open to those with a sincere desire to train in the older methods of Okinawan Karate and Kobudo. If you are my friend on facebook, you can view the album with all of the construction progress and final results. Album