It was signed by Sensei Stan and dedicated to his former assistant, thanking her for her help in editing the thesis. When he came to Ireland I showed it to him; he was stunned, and readily wrote in it for me.
People who knew of my friendship with Sensei Stan sometimes contacted me to ask where they could get the book, and I often sent people one of my spare copies. When I ran out of spares, I contacted Sensei Stan to ask if he had more. Unfortunately, he had also run out. I asked him if he could contact the publisher to see about getting the book reprinted. He did so, but the publisher did not consider it viable.
Rather than give up, I then suggested that perhaps we could get it reprinted ourselves, if the publisher would allow it. The original book was great, but it had a significant number of typographical errors and the binding sometimes caused the pages to come loose. I felt we could improve it if we could republish it. Sensei Stan spoke again to the publisher, who gave permission for us to republish the book. I was thrilled! I knew that there was still a demand, and that a lot of people had never had a chance to read it simply because it was not available.
We decided to bring it out as a limited-edition hardback, with each copy individually numbered and signed by Sensei Stan. We re-edited the whole book, correcting all the typographical errors. Then I contacted my old friend Maurice Richard Libby from Canada, and asked him to produce some illustrations to go with the new edition. We worked with a publishing house to organise the hardback binding, dust jacket and a box sleeve for the whole package.
During the final stages of production, Sensei Stan surprised me with a request. He had written a new epilogue to go with the book, and he asked me if I would write a new foreword. I was stunned, but delighted to contribute to a book that meant so much to me.
The book was published as a special collector’s item. It was expensive to produce, so it was not a cheap product, but it was still cheaper than most of the second-hand paperback versions available on the internet.
It was surreal to me that I was able to become directly involved with a book that had been at least partly instrumental in keeping me from quitting training when my friends were dropping out, and which enabled me to become friends with one of the great karate masters of the world. At least it was available once more, and seeing it listed on the website of the world’s largest online bookseller gave me an immense feeling of satisfaction.
42. PINK KARATE
A few years ago I had an idea to raise money for charity. After Christoph had passed away from a brain tumour, I had wanted to do something to assist cancer charities. It occurred to me one day that the ‘pink ribbon’ symbol for Breast Cancer Awareness looked a little bit like a pink karate belt. Of course, there is no such rank as pink belt in karate, so I wondered if we could get some pink belts made and if people would buy them and wear them for a good cause. It was September, and October is Breast Cancer Awareness month, so the timing seemed good. I used social media to investigate the idea, asking people what they thought. The response was overwhelmingly positive, so I started looking for a supplier of the belts.
I found a company based in the USA that said they could supply pink belts. I placed an order for fifty belts, and started promoting ‘Pink Karate – Breast Cancer Awareness’. The idea was that I would pay for the belts myself, but when selling them the proceeds would go to charity. Within days I had orders or queries for more than the fifty belts that I had ordered, so I placed a second order with the company, this time for two hundred belts.
The first fifty belts arrived, and I distributed them to those who had ordered first. The company was promising me that the rest of the belts would arrive soon, but days turned to weeks, and assurances from the supplier turned to silence and unreturned phone calls. It soon became apparent that there was a problem. When I eventually managed to speak to someone, they told me three different stories about why there was a delay. I had lost all faith in them at this stage, and anyway October was now almost over so I contacted my credit card company and got them to cancel the transaction and refund my money.
I brought some of the few belts I had left from the first batch to Japan, and I had pictures taken with all of the SKIF Honbu Dojo instructors wearing them. When they saw the belts at first I could see them thinking ‘I’m not wearing that!’, but as soon as I explained the reason for it they all put them on with no hesitation and were happy to pose for pictures.
Unfortunately, quite a few people were disappointed that year, having either ordered belts or told me that they would order them. Of course, anyone who ordered belts but didn’t receive them got a full refund, but I still felt I had let people down, despite my efforts.
I was going to drop the whole idea completely, but was in Canada a few weeks later at a seminar with Kanazawa Sensei and Murakami Sensei. We were taken to a martial arts goods supplier in Montreal who told me that they could easily make the pink belts for me within a few weeks. I decided to give it another try. This time I ordered one thousand belts in six different sizes. It was November, so we had eleven months to get organised before the following October. Again, promises from sales people didn’t turn into delivery. I had been told I would have the belts by April. In the end, I had to tell the company in September that if I didn’t have the belts by the beginning of October I would require a full refund. Even then, I didn’t actually receive the belts until nearly halfway through October. But eventually they did arrive and I was able to get them out to people.
After that, things started to go more smoothly. The idea was that people would buy the belt, and the proceeds would go to a Breast Cancer charity. Then, simply by wearing the belt they would raise awareness, because the belts were very noticeable as something unusual and made people ask what they were about. Awareness helps lead to early detection, because it reminds people to do regular health checks, and early detection saves lives. But I also encouraged people to do a sponsored ‘Pink Karate’ event in their club, and raise money for their local cancer charity. Then I encouraged them to take pictures and send them in to their local papers to raise awareness again, with the added bonus of generating free publicity for their club.
Soon people were posting pictures all over social media with their pink belts. One club in the USA sent me an email with pictures, saying they had raised nearly $1,000 in sponsorship for a local cancer charity simply by wearing their pink belts in class.
I had pictures of quite a few students and senior instructors wearing the pink belts, so I thought we could do a calendar with pictures of people wearing the belts. We did one in 2012 with Kanazawa Sensei, Sensei Stan Schmidt, various SKIF Honbu Dojo instructors and groups all with their pictures in it. Again, I put up the money for the calendar, with the proceeds to go to charity. Unfortunately, the calendar sales were poor, and I would have been better off just donating the cost of the calendars to charity in the first place. I thought I might try it a second year, with the idea that I would get more groups to submit pictures, and if we got a lot of group pictures then everyone who was in each picture would want at least one copy of the calendar. I sent a note with each belt sold, asking for pictures to be sent in. But I got very few pictures back, so I had to give up on that idea.
Still, more and more people were buying and wearing the belts, and posting pictures online and spreading the word. Over the coming years I even saw that other groups were getting their own pink belts made and wearing them in October as well, making their own donations to charity.
However, despite some difficulties along the way, it has been worth overcoming the obstacles. It has been far more successful than I thought it would be when it started. With the money that I received from selling the belts, and the money that people raised and sent directly to their local breast cancer charities, tens of thousands of euro have been raised and donated to various cancer charities through the idea of Pink Karate.
43. SIMPLE PLEASURES
Kanazawa Sensei is great company when he is able to relax with people he knows. I have been for
tunate enough to stay in the same hotels and houses with him on many occasions. I have seen him relax and enjoy himself, and he enjoys a good laugh as much as anyone.
On one occasion, Kanazawa Sensei and I were staying at the home of Sensei Jim Shea in Boston. While Sensei Jim and his wife were cooking a barbeque dinner for us all, I sat and watched Kanazawa Sensei casually doing T’ai Chi in the garden. He wasn’t doing it for show, or to teach, or even as serious practice; he was simply killing time and stretching his legs before dinner. But it was superb. I remember thinking that if I could just once in my life do T’ai Chi as well as that, I would be happy.
After a lovely dinner on the patio, the evening was getting cooler, so we moved to where the brand new fire pit had been lit. Sensei Jim was delighted with his new toy, and was keen for us to try it out, and I had bought some giant marshmallows to toast on bamboo skewers. The trouble was, I had never toasted marshmallows before (it is not an Irish thing – toasting marshmallows in the rain has little appeal), so the first one I attempted caught fire and had to be thrown into the flames. The second one melted too much and got a bit too gooey, so it slid off the skewer into the pit as well.
Kanazawa Sensei was laughing at my attempts, so I said he should have a go, and handed him a skewer and marshmallow. Actually, we all just laughed and had fun, and I believe more marshmallows went into the fire pit than got eaten that evening. Sensei Jim pretended to protest that he was going to have to scrub the pit clean the next day because of all the burned marshmallows sticking to the bottom, but then his marshmallow fell into the pit as well!
We eventually did get the hang of it and managed to eat some toasted marshmallows. Kanazawa Sensei, who had never had them before, declared that they were delicious. Sometimes it is the simplest of things, and good company, that provide the best of memories.
44. TEACHING SEMINARS
Over the next few years more and more SKIF students all over the world actively participated in Bo-Jutsu seminars and examinations, and the movement continued to grow steadily. I had the privilege of teaching Bo-Jutsu classes on seminars with Kanazawa Sensei in several different countries. On one occasion, after teaching a seminar in the USA in 2010 we were walking back to our hotel rooms together and Kanazawa Sensei said, ‘I enjoyed watching you teaching today.’ Naturally, I was pleased that he seemed to approve of my teaching, but I admitted to him that it made me very nervous to teach anything while he was watching. ‘Yes, I know,’ he replied with a chuckle and a grin, as he disappeared into his room.
I began to travel to different countries to teach Bo-Jutsu seminars by myself. By now my business was struggling due to global economic difficulties, so I made the decision that, instead of subsidising my karate club as I had for eighteen years, the karate club would have to subsidise me. I therefore became a semi-professional instructor, taking a small wage from the dojo for the first time. I still had to work though, so I tried to limit myself to teaching weekend seminars only, to minimise the disruption to my normal working week, even if this often meant taking the Friday and Monday off work in order to travel to and from the seminar.
But I was not complaining. It is always very enjoyable to teach something new, and I tried to make the seminars interesting and fun, while hopefully also showing people how training in Bo-Jutsu could help improve their karate. This was the original reason that Kanazawa Sensei studied Bo-Jutsu, as well as other Kobudo (weapon arts), and T’ai Chi. With the Bo, he studied traditional Bo-Jutsu, and developed his own kata and system so that karate students could easily relate to and learn from it. This, therefore, is always the main theme of my seminars.
As soon as we had conducted the first grading examinations in Bo-Jutsu we were approached by several countries keen on hosting seminars. Sensei Jim Palmer in Scotland had attended and graded at the first seminar, and he immediately asked me to travel to Scotland to conduct a seminar for his students. I have been there every year since then. I also travelled to Montreal with Kanazawa Sensei and Murakami Sensei shortly after we conducted the first examinations in England, and we held the second group of examinations there, this time for students from Canada, USA and Mexico. The instructors from Montreal and USA had been enthusiastic about having Bo-Jutsu classes as part of their seminars for the previous few years, so I was very glad that they were among the first to get to take the grading examinations. Over the next few years, I travelled several times to both Rochester in New Hampshire and to Montreal.
A couple of years later, Richard and Michel – the instructors in Montreal – asked permission for me to join Murakami Sensei on his annual seminar with them, to teach Bo-Jutsu and Tai-Chi. Murakami Sensei very kindly agreed to this. The event was so successful that Murakami Sensei suggested to Richard and Michel that this should become an annual event, with both of us going there together. This was a very generous suggestion from Murakami Sensei, to allow me to join him and do some teaching, and I was very grateful, as always, for the support that I was receiving from the Honbu Dojo instructors. We have done that seminar together for several years now, and it seems much appreciated by the students.
Other countries were now also seeking to hold Bo-Jutsu seminars, so I was making about eight teaching trips each year, plus taking another one or two trips abroad to train with the other instructors. International travel is not always straightforward though. Having had my suitcase go missing in the past, I always make sure to bring a karate-gi and my belt in my hand luggage when I travel.
On one occasion, I was travelling to Ukraine to teach my annual weekend seminar there. Despite the fact that I was travelling from one European country to another, I had to take three flights to get to my destination, L’viv. This meant taking Friday off work and being at Dublin airport at about 5:30am. Because of fog in Frankfurt – my first stop – we were delayed leaving Dublin. I was worried about missing my connecting flight from Frankfurt, but the airline kept telling me that it would be ok, because flights out of Frankfurt were also delayed. They didn’t seem to understand when I told them that I had a further connection. Sure enough, when I finally got to Frankfurt, my connecting flight to Vienna was delayed and it looked like I was going to miss the flight from there to L’Viv. I tried to get the airline to change me to a different route, but they just kept telling me that there were lots of people on the flight who had the same connection in Vienna, so they would hold the flight for us.
Needless to say, they didn’t hold the flight. It had taken off before we even landed in Vienna. The people at the customer service desk told me that the next flight to L’Viv was the next day, so I would have to stay in Vienna for twenty-four hours! My only other option was to take a flight to Kiev, and make my own way from there. I contacted my hosts in Ukraine, and they advised me to take the flight to Kiev, as some of the people participating on the seminar would be driving through Kiev and could collect me.
I arrived in Kiev after 11pm that night, several hundreds of kilometres from L’Viv. I was collected at the airport by guys who were driving a beat-up transit van. They asked me if I wanted to ride in the front or in the back. I was surprised to be offered the back, but then they showed me the sofa they had tucked in there! I chose to stay in the front, with a proper seat and a seatbelt.
Although Kiev is a mere 550 km (340 miles) from L’Viv, it took a long time to get there. Roads were not in great condition, as Ukraine is not a wealthy country. Driving in the van with people sitting on a sofa in the back was slow enough. Also, they had driven several hours from eastern Ukraine to get as far as Kiev, so they were already tired. After a few more hours of driving, we pulled in at a cheap hotel to rest – from about 3am until 6:30am – and then we were off again.
It was lunchtime on Saturday by the time we finally arrived in L’Viv. We were supposed to have had a two-hour class in the morning and then another two-hour class in the afternoon. I suggested to my hosts that we do four hours in the afternoon to make up for the lost time, and they were delighted with that. I was tired, naturall
y, but glad that we were able to make up the lost time for the students on the seminar. It had been a difficult journey, but it was interesting to get driven halfway across Ukraine, and I had been very well looked after once I got as far as Kiev, so I couldn’t complain.
At one point, my day job took me to South America and I spent a bit of time in Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. It was great to be able to go and train with the local dojos in the various countries, but in Argentina they organised for me to do some formal seminars as well. I visited two years in a row, and by the end of my time visiting there I was able to conduct Bo-Jutsu grading examinations for them.
In spite of the occasional flight hiccups, I know it is a privilege to travel to different countries and teach seminars, and I always enjoy meeting up with old friends and making new ones.
45. EUROPEAN CHAMPIONSHIPS 2014
The SKIF European Championships were held in Dresden, Germany, in 2014. I had not been involved with the Irish team since I retired from competing in 2001. However, about a month before the team were due to travel to Dresden I was approached by the chairman of SKIF-Ireland and asked if I would take on the role of team manager for the event. This is an administrative role, not to be confused with that of coach. My role was to take charge of the day-to-day tasks, such as helping to sort out the buses, hotel rooms, training space and times, and dealing with issues as they arose at the event. It is a role intended to free up the coaches and competitors to focus on the competition itself. I agreed to give it a try, although I was concerned that I had been away from the competition scene for so long that I might not be much help. But the job was straightforward enough, and was more about organising skills than competition, so it suited me.
A Karate Story Page 19