Have you ever heard of Jean-Claude Van Damme? The guy that in the ninetees had so many action movies like you have pair of socks? Ok, you won’t have so many pair of socks. He was the cool fighter that helped the good looking woman, or the poor guy that lost everything or one of those typical stories that makes us think: yeah! beat that bad guy! And Steven Seagal? The martial arts god that would break so many legs and arms of his enemies in each of his movies that we always wanted to try that by ourselves but thought it might hurt? That was the moment we learnt that human body has 200 bones! Did you know they are both Japanese!??
No, they are not, their names will tell you that even if you might have never seen a movie of them. But that’s not the point. I was a kid and loved martial arts movies like “Karate Tiger”, “Nico” and all the other movies nobody can remember a title of but had so many great fighting scenes. I guess that made me want to be a good guy killing gangsters by kicking them or breaking each of their toes until they told me why they want to hijack that ship!

Now leave my website, turn your PC off and go and find a friend of yours, ask somebody to tell you 3 different martial arts, you can also use Facebook, ICQ or just a search engine. The top answers will be Karate or Kung Fu. At that time I neither knew Bruce Lee nor Jackie Chan movies, so my brother and I started to learn Karate, that ancient japanese martial art. There was only one problem, I never liked fighting if it meant full contact. I enjoyed practising the different Kata, which are traditional move sequences and I didn’t mind the training, but the Kumite, fighting against somebody always made me feel awkward. So much, that once I even agreed on shadow fighting with my opponent. Our Sensei, which means teacher, didn’t like that.

I even entered a competition where I had to make a Kata and one or two fights. And even it’s kind of hard to think you might win your first competition I cried when I lost. Come on! I was not even 10 years old! Once there was a camp we went to, which lasted three days. A farm, actually an “hacienda” if you are familiar with the term. It’s a manor house surrounded by fields with it’s own water source, let it be a well or a small creek. It was a good experience, I realized, however, I am not keen on taking a bath in the river with my white Kimono – japanese Karate suit – on, as it would get dirty.

Summarizing: I was a chicken. I gave up Karate after about one year, despite of being good making Katas and learning them fast. Unfortunately it was not the last time I gave up doing something, but that’s another story.

There was something else that interested me about Karate, apart from the Kata. It was the language. We got some sheets of paper to learn japanese terms for stances, kicks, parts of the body and so on and I really liked learning that.

Thinking back I spent more of my private time learning the words than practising Karate. There was something about it that made it particular interesting for me. Was it the words nobody could remember or the thought that somewhere in the world there were asian people (Sorry if somebody feels insulted, but as if I would have been able to tell you a difference between Chinese and Japanese when I was 7 years old!) training, fighting and having a traditional ceremony when they got their Obi – the beld which signalizes your ranking.

As I grew older I thought of starting up again to learn Karate but even now I don’t feel the rush to do so, yet. Maybe there will be a day I will want to wear a white Kimono again, maybe not.

It’s really amazing that any influence no matter how small you may think it is or was can be the first step to your new life. I am proud to say that I started taking japanese lessons just three weeks ago in order to improve the pace of learning this wonderful but tricky language.

So, what did you do, decades ago which still has an impact in your life today???