空手 KARATE and how it has become my passion (2)

Part 2: Karate in the present

Here comes Luxemburg. After a couple of months arriving in the country, I began to look for a martial art club. I first came to a kung-fu club, talking to the old Korean maitre who had been practicing martial arts for over 60 years, who had participated in many battles during the world war II. I saw people practicing Tai Chi Chuan in class, some other practiced kung-fu techniques on their own. No fighting, no confronting at all. The Tai Chi Chuan that we practice nowadays is just a kind of meditation, sometimes to help to circulate well blood vessels for old people, it is no more a martial art for fighting. I asked the maitre if there would be some kind of combat training. He told me to find a karate or taekwondo club if that was what I want. Young people nowadays are so aggressive and arrogant, he continued, they think that they could learn some martial art and fight in the streets. Even Bruce Lee, the legend of kung-fu, died in a street combat, don’t you know? During wars with guns, grenades, bombs, martial arts don’t help you much. So why do you want to learn martial art? To fight in the streets? That can bring you no good. True. I do dream about becoming a hero of the streets, take down big guys with just a finger flip J But I never fought in the streets though. Firstly, I had no occasion, I’ve never been attacked. Secondly, even if I were, I’d rather run than fight back, I’m not that stupid after all. I told the maitre that I would want to train in combat because I think that is an excellent way to train speed, agility, tactic… , to see the effect of our techniques. That was when he told me that he stopped training people in combat because someone in the club died during training when he was in charge of the club, and he never dared to do combat training again. Ok, things got clearer. At least he understood that I wasn’t some aggressive and arrogant kid .

Luckily I found a karate club not too far from the center of Lux ville. On the first day, the lion (let’s call my favorite karate teacher so from now on) jumped to next to me and asked: “Nihon jin desu ka?” (are you Japanese?). “Iie (no), je suis vietnamienne”. He wasn’t disappointed for long when he found out that I was living in Japan, spoke Japanese and had a quite awesome basic technique. The lion is a Luxemburgish electronic engineer who has a company of his own, about 50 years old, has been practicing karate for over 30 years. He is so passionate, cheerful, serious when it comes to serious stuffs. He’s in love with Japan. He’s been going to Japan very often for business. He didn’t miss the chance to learn so much about karate during all those years. He knew so much about martial arts, karate, human body and its mechanism. Of course you have to know how human body works to be able to take the best from it, and to be able to strike on your adversary’s weak points or to block him. I was always listening with my mouth open when he talked about martial art. I had the impression that all the magic things about martial arts that I saw on movies in my childhood were all coming back to me. The lion was usually very pleased with me during classes. He told everybody else to look at me, well, yeah, when I was the only black belt there, there’s nothing to be proud about. The lion even named me “Ninja chatton” (chatton means kitten in French). And just yesterday night, an Italian black belt in the club even added “tamagotchi”. So my nickname became “ninja chatton tamagotchi” . The lion was really excited about that.

Remember when I was speaking about passion? It’s something that you have to work on to, passion never comes to you itself, you have to work hard to deserve it. I never thought of karate as my passion before I came to Luxemburg. I’ve changed a lot. Even when I was in Japan, spending 3 hours each day in karate club, I wasn’t that passionate. I didn’t spend the whole 3 hours to practice, sometimes just sitting there when the teacher was away. But well, I learnt quite fast when I tried to do something, so it was still ok.

Passion is like a halo shining around a person. Everyone else around can also see it, feel it if they care enough. I do. I can feel the halo around the lion. And somehow it ran into me too.

I never missed a karate training (on Tuesday and Thursday) if it wasn’t for anything else more important like work or night classes, even for extra classes sometimes on Wednesday or Friday, I always came. The lion got all excited and took me to a sport store to buy protections for combat training last weekend. Then he even took me to the club and trained only me for more than one hour in karate combat and katana combat. Katana means sword in Japanese. We used compressed-air katanas so it doesn’t hurt at all, or you won’t see me here with an undeformed head. He kept telling me not to be afraid, and OPEN MY EYES!!! Actually I was well equipped with protections from head to heels: solid casque, gloves, chest protections, leg protections. But I was still afraid. I still remembered from precedent fights that the lion has very agile legs, even when he goes very slowly I could never get what kind of kicks he was gonna use, and I always ended up taking kicks on my head or stomach. That was when he didn’t want to use punches because it was even much easier to get to my face, stomach or chest. But this time he kept putting the pressure on me and I had no other choice than to attack, attack and attack, to get into the fight and forget my fear. The lion did go easy on me from time to time to encourage me to attack. And then when I got too excited, he just gave me a really hard kick or punch to make me understand where my place should be. That just made my head want to fall off. But the casque is Japanese, 160 euros, excellent quality, so my head is still on now. Another thing I learnt is that never stop attacking. That’s what I was told, but in fact I found out that I should do anything, doing stupid attack or whatever comes to me, it still comes out better than not doing anything. The lion said that I learnt quickly. The next day, the lion wanted to take me to run to train my endurance. He said that we would run for 40 minutes! Hic, 3 is already too much for me. Luckily we didn’t go at last :P

Just yesterday night, the lion got excited again and announced to me that he would be my personal trainer. He would train me to become a real “ninja chatton”. He would take 2kg of grease out of me, and make me gain 4kg of muscles. It means that he thinks I have at least 2kg of grease on my body, am I that fat? Anyway, let’s not concentrate on the details. That is a so excellent news!!! ;)