I made green belt tonight! The official title is gokyu, which roughly translates to fifth-level student. Purple and three levels of brown belts are still ahead.
I’m eager to learn my next kata, Naihanchi sho:
It looks like a fun kata to learn and perform, but it also lets me geek out about karate history and my style’s lineage a bit. The last Okinawan in the Shuri-ryu line, Choki Motobu, felt this kata taught everything one needed to know to become a fighter. Motobu in turn learned it from Anko Itosu and Bushi Matsumura, both of whom are important names in almost all styles.
In other words, this is the first kata I learn that many other Shuri-te-related styles appear to interpret the same way we do in Shuri-ryu. Unlike the two Chinese kata I know, Anaku and Wansu, I feel like I could show up at another dojo, perform Naihanchi, and not get a bunch of funny looks from the crowd.
Cool stuff. To me, anyway.
The only killer is I probably have to wait until next week to start learning it.
on Apr 10th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
[...] Monday’s run to get some karate practice in before Tuesday night’s review (I did get promoted, by the way). Tuesday night a storm blew through, so I couldn’t run after karate. The weather [...]