The Essence Of Karate

Greetings to all of our readers and welcome back to school, work and the Fall season in general.  Over the Labor Day weekend I traveled back to my hometown of Toronto, Canada to visit friends and family.  When I arrived I made a point of visiting my former teacher Kancho Takemasa Okuyama.  We had spoken in sometime and I wanted to reconnect with him as I do not get the opportunity to travel back to Canada very often.

In an article I wrote last month about How To Choose a Karate School, you will note I did a lot research and visiting karate schools in Toronto in the 1990's before I found him, and consider myself very fortunate to have done so.

Visiting him was a pleasure and going back to my old dojo brought back a lot of fond memories. It also reminded me of what I admire about him most, which I would like to share with you today on the anniversary of the attacks of September 11th.

Best Wishes Senpai Miguel

On behalf of Sensei Norman and myself, we would like to take the opportunity to express our gratitude to Senpai Miguel Novoa for his contributions to the dojo over the past year. Miguel has accepted a new position with the NYC Department of Corrections. This is a position he applied for many months ago and he had to go through a rigorous process before he was finally accepted.

Senpai Miguel Novoa is a lifelong student of Sensei. He began his karate training in 1991 and has been a teacher assisting Sensei Smith since 2000. Senpai is a veteran of the US Army and has served his country with tours in Japan and Iraq. As a sergeant of the Army he lead many convoy missions and supervised critical maintenance procedures to various military vehicles. He also used his knowledge of martial arts to train members of his unit.

Throughout my martial arts experience, I have found it rare to train with someone who is an exceptional martial artist, and exceptional teacher and an exceptional person at the same time. Miguel is all three and it has been an honor to train with him. Being the person he is, I have no doubt he will be successful in anything he does.

Finally, if you happen to be reading this while locked-up on Rikers Island, I suggest you do what this guy tells you to do.