2024-07-01

Teaching my regular classes at the Ross Farnsworth - East Valley YMCA.

Tonight I was visited by a family with three children looking for a new dojo. Their regular dojo is closing in a few weeks, so they’re “shopping” for a new place to train. They sat and watched part of my youth class and then returned for part of my adult class before sticking around and asking questions. The school they’re coming from teaches Shotokan on paper but, when they offered to show me a couple of katas, I have to admit I couldn’t identify their provenance. That is to say, I can sometimes tell whether someone’s kata descends from Sugiyama, Nishiyama, or Kanazawa, because some difference - be it a stance difference here or a hand position there - betrays the kata’s origin. I think of it sort of like differences in dialect … like Castilian Spanish vs. Mexican Spanish, if you will. But I wasn’t able to do that with these katas. They were different. It was more like Spanish vs. Portugese. I let them know they’re welcome to train with me, of course, but that training with me will probably require several months of unlearning and relearning.