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2010 Okinawa Trip Page 4

Sunday July 18 After seeing the group off at the international terminal to the right of the Naha Airport, the girls and I followed Sunagawa Sensei into Kokusai Dori and parked behind Gibu Sensei’s business. It was a rainy day so we scurried along the side streets of Tsuboya and stopped for lunch at a Chinese/Taiwanese restaurant that was owned by some friends of Sunagawa san. Most of the food was vegetarian but there was some wonderful hot chili sauce that went well with a number of the tempura fried food. Makoto Sensei and his daughter Ryoko-chan joined us and then we made our way up to the Yachimun house for our appointment.
We were a little early and the teacher was leaving for her lunch so we decided to walk through Heiwa Dori and show the girls the Makishi market. We navigated through the packed aisles of patrons and restaurant owners all trying to fight for placement in getting some of the freshest catches of the day. I chatted with a couple of the ladies in “pig central” and I was very proud of Madison who tried Buta no Shita or pig’s tongue. Emily passed but was intrigued by the enormous live lobsters that were in the tanks on the other side. The size of these crustaceans were tremendous and I could only imagine the price that they would bring on an American restaurant table. Over here, there are reasonably priced and they are usually cooked with a sauce that is made from the “mustard” or fat inside the body. Makishi also has a restaurant on the second floor and you can see runners coming down and collecting customer’s “orders” to be cooked within feet of the tables.




We headed back to the pottery school and the girls, Ryoko and I all chose the type of shi-sa to make. Through the rising humidity from the recent rain, we all followed our step by step instructions and eventually finished our projects. I was very proud of both girls as they wrote their names in katakana on their shisa bases and we filled our address information to have them shipped to the US when they were finished in the kiln. We walked down the Tsuboya Pottery Museum which was a first for me and we learned a great deal about the history of the methods and styles of yachimun. The girls and I had a nice relaxing meal at the hotel and then called it an early night.





Tsyuboya Pottery Museum





Monday July 19 Today was the “umi holiday” and most things were closed and due to the downpour, I imagined that everyone was enjoying a little extra sleep. Tamaki Sensei and Sunagawa Sensei picked the girls and I up and we drove around the fence line of Kadena Air Base on our way to Murasaki Mura in Yomitan. Sunagawa Sensei wanted to have the girls experience bingata and see the village while Tamaki Sensei granted me a special interview. While the girls learned the beautiful art of bingata, Tamaki Sensei gave me a look into his own karate history which started with instruction from Chibana Choshin at his junior high school. There were some lighter moments of the interview concerning Chibana Sensei but I will share those later. Tamaki Sensei had begun with Matsubayashi Ryu and then taken a break while he left to attend school on mainland Japan. Upon returning, he resumed training but in Shorin-Ryu under Gibu Sokuichi Sensei. A lot of insight on historical training methods and memories were shared with me but I was honored to have a small “private lesson” with him inside the bingata shop. I asked Tamaki Sensei if he would pretend that I was a white belt and give me a lesson on stances with an emphasis on perfecting form and proper ashi tension. It was an incredible experience and very insightful beyond the typical outlined feet that we see in karate books. He was very critical about WHY the tension occurred due to certain techniques with upper body and why certain stances are used for certain techniques.


	We had some time before I had to meet Gibu Sensei for my formal interview with him so we stopped in another craft area and each made a personal clock. Madison and Emily picked out some cute things to decorate theirs while my eye caught the miniature Orion beer bottles and I couldn’t resist. Tamaki Sensei laughed and said “Spence San, there is more to life than sake.”


After saying goodbye and thanking them, the girls and I left in our car for Urasoe where we met our exchange student Rio and then Gibu Sensei and Gibu Makoto Sensei. We had a great steak lunch and Hanshi got a chance to talk to Rio and tell her about his experiences in Williamsburg last summer. After lunch(and at the impressive patience of my girls) Sensei granted me a very extensive interview not only of his karate history but the history of the Shorinkan and the people in it. Gibu Sensei was the Vice President of Shorinkan before he left to head his own organization of the Butokukan. The interview was very enlightening, informative and I feel grateful to have learned so much from a man who has been there from the beginning and such a prominent figure in his generation of Shorin-Ryu.
After a well-needed nap, the girls and I began preliminary packing in the tatami room and were trying to guess what our estimated baggage weight was going to be. We took Izumi Sensei to the Four Season Steakhouse to treat him to our annual dinner of Kobe steak. The girls were very excited as they had been promised this for over a year but I couldn’t tell who was anticipating this more, the my daughters or Izumi Sensei. We had a wonderful appetizer course of yagi sashimi(raw goat) and escargot with Madison being very adventurous again and trying the goat! Yagi is a wonderful tasting meat raw and the Okinawans consider it a delicacy. After a wonderful steak dinner, we drove Izumi Sensei home, pushed the beds together in the room and passed out.


Tuesday July 20 Izumi Sensei picked us up in the lobby and stopped by the local Koza seafood market before taking us to the preschool that his children attended. The market was very small but had a huge tank that took half of the floor space up with a variety of live fish swimming in it, waiting to go home with a hungry customer. The girls had a great time at the preschool helping with everything from art class to changing diapers. The kids finished the morning by doing origami with the children and drawing a picture together. After leaving, I broke down and finally stopped at McDonalds for the first time in our trips and treated the girls and Izumi Sensei to lunch. We stopped back by the seafood market to pick up some fresh uni(sea urchin) and small live crabs to eat later and then dropped Izumi Sensei off at his office.




Later on, I spent a special afternoon with Shimabukuro Zempo Sensei, 10^th dan at his office in Koza after we had set an appointment earlier in the week for an interview. Shimabukuro Sensei was very interested in some of the content that I told him that I was searching for and said that he would like to help me “clear the air” with a lot of incorrect historical accounts in the West concerning Okinawa karate history as well as training. It was amazing to listen him talk softly, then pop up and throw incredibly fast punches in the air as he discussed techiniques and mechanics. We discussed a great deal of things that I will publish formally at a later time but I learned a what seemed like twenty years of “light bulbs” in that afternoon in his office. He drove me back to the Deigo Hotel and I instantly went to writing down things and transcribing our interview from the digital recorder.

The girls and I headed to the Hombu dojo for the Black Belt only training as well as the monthly kyokai meeting. We “warmed up” with the entire empty hand kata syllabus and then had a short break before we moved on to kobudo. Athough we spent time on all of the kobudo kata, Sensei paid extra attention to kama this time. As always, he entertained questions and would correct weapons mechanics at certain times throughout the forms. After training, everyone brought out the low table and pillows while Sensei brought out cold drinks and snacks for the group. Tamaki Sensei opened the meeting and then the events for the upcoming months/year were announced. We discussed our next trip for 2011 and our next international gasshuku in Virginia in August of 2012. This one would be open to anyone that we wanted to invite and would involve a large contingent from the Hombu dojo. I translated Magnavachi Sensei’s letter into Japanese for them it was nice to hear that he and his students were doing well in Argentina. They also asked me to also assist with writing names in katakana from the recent tests in Carlos Sensei's dojo. I said my final goodbyes to my sempai and headed back to Koza for one last dinner at the Lemon Grass.

Wednesday July 21 Izumi Sensei tricked the girls and I by taking us to a local shopping mall instead of the scheduled preschool assignment. I should have known that the girls’ adopted uncle had something up his sleeve and we headed to the children’s floor of multi-storied mall in Chatan. He brought the girls into one area and said”choose.” His English gets better and better as he told me ”Daddy, Zip it!” as I gave him a look for this generosity. We left to eat at the local yaki niku(all you can eat restaurant where you cook your own food) and stopped into a “granola-type” store while we waited for the lunch hour to start.




The girls had a great time cooking their own food and we stuffed ourselves for our allotted hour. That evening, Izumi Sensei asked me to teach class at the Koza dojo. After doing yobi undo, we moved on to doing various exercises with nigiri game and then on to bag work for iri kumi combinations. At the end of class, Izumi Sensei worked privately with two of his kumite competitors for an upcoming tournament and asked me to work with his English speaking, yellow belt student on a kata of his choice. When the boy asked for Kusanku Dai, I looked at Izumi Sensei who didn't blink an eye and said that he has worked very hard and is very dedicated. Sure enough, he had half of the form down by the end of the session and was performing the individual waza extremely well-an excellent display of Izumi Sensei’s talent as a teacher





Izumi Sensei told the girls and I to run back and get changed so he could take them for a promised ride in the Chatan ferris wheel . We had a quick dinner at a pizza restaurant and then headed up for our revolving view of the island. Izumi Sensei is very afraid of heights and it just showed his love for his “adopted nieces” as he sat very quietly through the two full spins he had purchased for the girls. After the ride, he took us back to the hotel and we set a time to leave for the airport.


Thursday July 22 We arrived at the airport early and luckily beat two junior high teams to the ticket counter. Rio san had taken the rail train to see us off and the girls were glad to see her one more time. Gibu Sensei, Gibu Makoto Sensei, Tamaki Sensei, Kiyuna Sensei and his wife, all came to see us off and we were able to talk a bit. I knew that they all had busy days ahead of them and led the girls through security and with a final wave said goodbye to my teacher, sempai and friends. The girls spent the rest of their yen on the massage chairs and we got settled into our seats for the flight to Tokyo. Narita was a disaster and they were only using two lines to get through security and then through immigration. After passing through, we had about 18 minutes until the flight was to leave. After sprinting through the concourses with my young daughters, we found that the flight was delayed. We eased our panic with a trip to the sushiya near our gate for a last meal of toro, uni and “easy” maki for the girls(although Madison did eat most of the toro!) I slept the whole way to Chicago and after another hustle to the gate, we made it for our flight to Virginia. Every trip is memorable and every moment with our friends and seniors has to be soaked in. We never know when we will see them again and have these experiences with them. I was thankful to have finally been able to bring my children on their own Okinawan journey and let them learn about the things I love so much about the island and it’s people. The training is always important and meaningful but the interviews on this trip was so enlightening and helped me to find so many of the answers to questions that I have had for a long time. Unfortunately, we get a very inaccurate historical view of Okinawa karate due to the amount of limited time people have trained on the island. My goal was to get training history from the people that have done it their whole lives and get a consistent of kata, kobudo and training past. I will always be grateful the kindness that Gibu Sensei and my seniors showed my family, my students and their parents. I only hope that no matter how many times that I say it to them, that they will one day know the feeling that never escapes me when I think of them.

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