NEW BEGINNINGS - DEJA VU IN ALBUQUERQUE NM

 It has been a little over a year since we relocated back to New Mexico. It has taken a while to get settled in and for me to start my new job as a Construction Observer for RESPEC Community Design Solutions -- Civil Engineers. We've been training in our home dojo, but need a larger space to reach out and open up for new students. Finally, that has happened.

Thank you to Marc Lewis, Chief Operating Officer of the YMCA of Central New Mexico for offering us a chance to build our club at The McLeod Family YMCA, located at 12500 Comanche Rd.NE - Albuquerque NM 87111. 

As many of you know, we had a dojo for years in the 1990's at Lomas and Carlisle and when we moved back to Austin TX we restarted at The Southwest YMCA and it was a wonderful win-win experience. I served on the Southwest Y Board of Directors and have been a big proponent of the YMCA's mission ever since. So in many ways this is a sort of Deja Vu and full circle.

We are also proponents of the values of traditional Japanese/Okinawan karate-do. Over decades Theresa and I have worked with so many students -- men and women, children and adults, and we know firsthand the benefits imparted to our students. They grow in confidence, in their ability to project, in their physical health and the grace of their movements. Our kids grow in overall fitness, in learning to work to achieve goals, in their ability to stand tall in their values and to not be bullied nor to be bullies.

We know Albuquerque will benefit from our work through the Y. If you aren't part of the solution to a better society, you are part of the problem. My hope is that you and your kids will check us out and get as much from your karate training as we have.

We begin classes at the McLeod Family YMCA on Tuesday, April 9th, right after the Albuquerque Public Schools Spring Break. We have a Meet the Instructors event on Saturday, March 23rd from Noon to 1:30 where you can get information on our dojo and our style and can discuss your training needs. I hope to see you there.

Yours in the Martial Arts,

Jim Pounds, 7th Dan

Theresa Herrera-Pounds, 5th Dan

JAPAN TRAINING 2015 - July 29th and 30th

July 28th and 29th, 2015.  1155
On the Shinkansen –Akita to Oita

I’m currently heading from Northern Honshu to Central Hokaido.  A long bit of distance.  Someone said about 600 miles.  We are on our second bullet train, having left Omagari at 0640 and will arrive in Oita almost twelve hours later.  My traveling companions are Gayle and Mario Borg, Seiwakai instructors who live in Sydney, Australia.  Some of our Omagari group decided to fly because of the distance, but the trains are a much better way to see the people and sights of Japan.  You can also sleep well on them and eat or drink.  Why we can’t create a rail system as efficient as the JR system is beyond me.  What a wonderful way to travel.  We are currently almost to Nagoya, going about 180 mph, the countryside rolling by like a movie panorama.

Yesterday turned into an inadvertent rest day for me, much needed and much appreciated.  I asked to skip the morning session to take the train over to Akita to activate my JR (Japan Railway) pass, which can only be done in major cities.  It’s about a 50 minute trip and I got over and took care of business and headed back to Omagari with some time to spare.  Had my gi in my shoulder bag and started for the Budokan.  I traveled a couple of blocks when the bottom fell out and it started raining cats and dogs and I was totally drenched.  I still had some time so thought I’d head over to the ryokan first and change clothes and maybe catch a ride back with Mr. Fujiwara.  I changed clothes and since my knee was hurting from the walk, I decided to lie down for a few minutes and elevate my leg.  Out!  Like a light. Awakened at almost 1600 and felt a bit guilty because I was probably needed for a grading panel for those grading for Seiwakai, but there was nothing to be done about it now.  When Mr. Fujiwara returned, I apologized to him for missing the session and he laughed when I told him what had happened and didn't seem too concerned.

We arrived at Beppu on schedule.  A couple of business men from Beppu on the train told us that chicken tempura and sho chu, a drink kind of like vodka distilled from wheat, were two things  Beppu was known for (other than the hot spring baths, of course).  Beppu is second only to Yellowstone National Park for the amount of hot spring geothermal activity.  It’s a bit of a tourist place around here, but not too bad. 

Goodnight.  My hands are typing very weird things
As I keep nodding out while on the keyboard.  Long day.

New Tatami Mats for the Dojo

 I am happy to say we finally invested in commercial-grade tatami mats for the Dojo.  Our previous 1" puzzle mats were excellent, but I wanted to move up to this top grade since so many students train on them. 

The new ones are ZEBRA 6'-7" x 3'4" x 1.5" thickness. They have a light rice-straw texture for grip without tearing up your feet during hours of training. www.ZebraAthletics.com  Check out their "About Us" tab and see whom all they serve as partners. These mats will serve us in karatedo, kobudo, takedowns and grappling, and yoga!

In karate, we have to protect our feet. The constant pounding and friction are hard on them. I love training on wood floors, but they can be too hard unless the subfloor has spring. Our subfloor is concrete.

Happy to have these!

James Pounds

SEIWAKAI PRESIDENT NO LONGER

 I have recently resigned as the President of the USA SEIWAKAI KARATE ORGANIZATION, our sport non-profit governing body.  I have served almost 4 years in that capacity and felt it was time to pass the torch so I can concentrate more time on my own dojo and my real estate business. 

I think the most importatant thing I have accomplished in addition to providing leadership was to have shepherded the 510(c)3 structure into existence. This structure will allow businesses and individuals to donate funds to support traditional karatedo in the United States and receive a tax deduction for doing so. 

It will also make it easier for USA Seiwakai to seamlessly move into the future with a solid Board of Directors and a perpetuity not typically found in most karate organizations. As many of our senior people age, we have sought to put together an organization that is dynamic and welcoming of new leaders and new energy from within our ranks. Fresh ideas and new energy!

Too often, karate organizations are headed by one founder or head instructor, which works well until that person retires or passes away. Because there was no clear path of succession, the organization typically splinters into multiple new groups, falters, or ceases to be. We wanted to avoid that and to empower members, while still acknowledging and respecting that Seiwakai International is headed by Seiichi Fujiwara Hanshi.

CHOP WOOD CARRY WATER: JAPAN IN 2022?

It has been too long since we have made it to Japan for summer training, and many of us are getting nostalgic because the training is so amazingly hot and hard, but also because the country is so welcoming.

But...Covid-19 is still around and the Japanese have been very protective of their own population by limiting who they allow into the country. Currently, other than Japanese citizens, only fully vaccinated foreign students studying there and business travelers are allowed in. There is speculation that these restrictions may ease after the national elections in July, but we are training there during previous national elections, because the Omagari Daisen city uses the Budokan (Martial Training Hall) as a polling location and we get bumped to other locations for several days.

We are currently trying to solve this situation by applying as business travelers, since that is what we are. We travel to Japan to train and learn so we can take what we learn back to our own country to our students. As members of both the Japan Karate Federation Goju-Kai and also Seiwakai International, we are in fact branches of Japanese business and the cultural art of Karate-do. Our businesses support their businesses, and vice-versa. 

Stay tuned. We hope to have good news about this soon. We are acting proactively because July will be here in no time. 

Meanwhile, we will continue to train hard -- chop wood, carry water.

FINALLY, A NEW WEBSITE!

 It’s been over two years since I updated our website and it has been long overdue.  In March of 2020, we lost our training space when Core Fitness closed because of Covid. I went back to training in my home dojo and it was just my son Jacob, Sensei Theresa, and myself for about a year.  We continued to teach and train on Zoom with limited success and then cautiously began training with others — keeping the dojo doors open and the fans blowing out.

During the Covid shutdown I began training in Okinawa Kobudo (weapons), taking instruction from my old friends Sheree Adams Sensei and Mary Margaret Graham Sensei, who had moved from Austin to Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada two years ago and started a new dojo there: North Island Karate and Kobudo. The dojo is a member dojo of Akamine Hiroshi Sensei’s Ryukyu Kobudo Shimbukan. It has been quite an experience to learn most of what I now know via Zoom, and it has probably made me a better instructor to understand what some of my students go through with remote learning. Training kobudo has been such a rewarding adjunct to my karate practice.

Training in Japan has been on hold due to travel restrictions but we are planning to train together this July, which will be the 50th anniversary of Tasaki Shuji’s founding of Seiwakai. While there I am hoping to also visit Okinawa and the Shimbukan Honbu Dojo. If you travel that far it behooves you to travel a bit as well as to train.

Pan America Seiwakai had it’s first in-person gasshuku training and seminar in the new Honbu Dojo in Los Angeles in November. Despite Fujiwara Sensei not being able to be there because of the travel restrictions, Vassie Naidoo Sensei, Seiwakai International Vice-President, was the head instructor. So great to be training face-to-face again!

Things are coming back around. Even my little club here in Johnson City is growing. If you are in the area and interested in training, please check us out: www.KarateSeiwakaiTX.com

DAY 6. IT'S OVER. . .?

July 23rd, and we're back in Omagari. The funny thing about this kind of training is that on the first day or two you sometimes wonder how you're going to make it through an entire week of heat, sweat, blistered feet, and spent bodies. Then a miraculous transformation occurs, invariably without you knowing it, and by the end of the week you're feeling strong and confident and actually feeling sad that this is the last day for another year.

Quite a few will be going on to Sasebo to the JKF Gojukai seminar, shinsa (grading), and the All-Japan Goju-Ryu Championships. But many won't and I'm sure they always feel like they're leaving prematurely. The last day always seems to enhance the feeling of camaraderie that has been building between all of us through the sweat, the fun, the beers. The last day is also the day of the Seiwakai shinsa and a fast and furious day of review, a microcosm of all we've been focused on during this year's training.

Canada, USA, Australia, S.Africa, USA, India

I won't give a blow-by-blow of the training day, because the pattern has held pretty true all week.  It was plenty hot, I'll say that. We ended near 3:00 pm because there were 29 karateka scheduled to grade, but of course, before we bowed out, we started at Sanchin kata and worked the entire Goju-Ryu kata syllabus through Suparinpei. Always when you think it is finished, it isn't! We were pretty soaked by then. See the above photo!

I was on the grading panel, all of us 7th dan except Vassie Naidoo Sensei and Seiichi Fujiwara Hanshi, who are 8th dans.  The 29 candidates were grading from 1st to 8th dan, so we observed all levels of experience and most were very impressive. In the lower yudansha ranks, some who were not as impressive in kata, were very impressive in kumite, or vice-versa. Of all of them, my unscientific observation was that the 5th and 6th dan candidates were most impressive, but the shodans were the happiest by far.  It pleases me to know there is an entire new guard of karateka who are moving up the Seiwakai ladder and who will no doubt assume future leadership roles. Kudos to their instructors! I know we are in good hands in the future.

And congratulations to all of you who passed!

Then it was back to the ryokan to soak our aching bodies in the sento bath and enjoy another fine dinner. There was a wee bit of toasting to Fujiwara Hanshi and our Seiwakai family. Some were leaving early tomorrow morning to all points of the globe, or heading for Sasebo. The professionals among us decided it was a good night for one last get-together downtown. Tomorrow is a travel day, which means you can sleep on the train or plane.

HOT, clear sento water

Kampai, Vassie Sensei!

Jay and me

Last night! And that's a wrap!