Entering the karate dojo at age 7
～The Karate Kid who has no sense at all～
At the age of 7, I entered the karate dojo in our small town of only 3000 inhabitants with my sister, who is two years older than me. But because I started karate only to become stronger, I didn’t really put my heart and soul into it. I didn’t practice at the dojo at all and if there was a festival or some other more interesting event going on, I would take a break and skip going to the dojo. My sister was the complete opposite: She had a good sense for karate and quickly improved her skills. Dan examinations are held three times a year, but I had already failed them four or five times. It is rare to fail the dan examinations four or five times. Naturally, there was a big gap between me and my classmates who started at the same time. When my classmates had already gotten their black belt, I still only had the purple or brown belt.
I started competing at the age of 7, but I never won a single kata or kumite match until I turned 11. One would think that if you’ve been doing karate for five years, you probably won at least one match, but hadn’t won a single one.
The tournaments start at 9:00 am and end at 6:00 pm, but the Karate Kid (Katada) lost his first match in the morning and thus the tournament ended for him immediately. In contrast to me, my older sister always got to the finals and always won medals while the Karate Kid (Katada) lost the first round and spent the day playing tag with his classmates from morning till night. When I think about it now, my parents just looked at me and thought “Oh, he lost”, but they never got angry.
