Ohio Budokan

We've had a promotion in our Genwakids class! Let's give Bronx some congratulations! Osu!

Another great discussion in our book club today. Everyone was a fan of The Easy Life in Kamusari and curious about reading the follow up novel eventually. We also discussed some of Shion Miura's other works that have been made into shows and movies, primarily the animated shows Run With the Wind and The Great Passage. All three works share a focus on the passion and drive necessary to achieve fairly mundane things that many people take for granted, as well as the community that makes those achievements both possible and rewarding. We also talked about the Mafia and yakuza for a bit as well and I don't totally remember how that happened, but it was interesting.

Our next book will be The Man Who Died Seven Times, described as a cozy time loop murder mystery. The meeting will be held in October, the exact day TBD. If you're interested in joining us for the discussion send us a message to get on the email list and join in!

We got more photos from last Saturday's tameshigiri. So many happy faces. We're all looking forward to next year already.

Our tameshigiri event was a great success! We had a few people new to cutting targets, so we had everyone start with newspaper targets before testing with tatami to review both proper technique and safety. But by the end of the day even the beginners had gotten at least one nice clean cut on a mat.

Expect more photos and maybe even some videos as we collect them from the various photographers present.

We're getting things ready for Tameshigiri tomorrow! This event is open only for our dojo members and invited guests. If you aren't signed up at the dojo yet, please contact us ASAP to get the details and get registered.

We’ve had some recent promotions in our Genwakai karate classes! A big OSU and congratulations to Taylor-san on earning yon-kyu and the Singh brothers for earning go-kyu. Let’s keep it up!

We had another great meeting of our movie club today! Which means that now it is time to announce the movies for our August meeting. We'll be dipping into Kurosawa for the first time with the double feature of Yojimbo and Sanjuro.

These films are often discussed for their influence and causing unusual moments in film history, such Yojimbo leading to a successful lawsuit against Sergio Leone for intellectual property theft and Sanjuro changing the way blood sprays in movies for decades afterwards. But they're also well regarded films without all that, so we'll have a lot to talk about next month.

If you're interested in joining our discussion group, just send a message to our page or email us at [email protected].

It’s getting hot and humid outside and our Saturday karate class abandoned the comfort of the dojo and AC to train outside and sweat it out!

Training in the martial arts is very much about being prepared and training outdoors during challenging weather is part of it. It’s one thing to know how hard you can push your body under ideal conditions and another to train through heat, snow, loose footing, thick air, wet grass, and general discomfort. It’s a good way to get to know yourself.

In Genwakai karate we train through it all!

Shoutout to Xenia Shoe and Leather Repair for doing an outstanding job repairing some of our traditional Japanese armor which is used for protection by our Genwakai karate class. As you can see they replaced the leather padding in the center of the armor and made it look and feel like new. These are made with stiff and thick padded cloth that is reinforced with stitching throughout so they are no easy task to repair. In fact, it took us a quite awhile to find a repair shop that would even try and we are so pleased with the work Xenia Leather Repair did for us. We will be back!