April 6th, 2008
This year was the 13th consecutive year this fiercely competitive competition has been held between Aikido Nippon Kan dojo and Enshin Karate dojo. For the past few years, Nippon Kan has emerged the victor, but this year, our dojo went down in defeat. Nippon Kan did not return to the dojo with the winning trophy this year.
It doesn’t matter who wins or loses, both Kanchos smile!
I am speaking of course about Nippon Kan and Enshin Karate’s annual BOWLING TOURNAMENT! As is tradition, the losing team’s uchideshi are doused with buckets of ice water as students and friends cheer them on. This year since Nippon Kan lost the tournament it was our uchideshi’s turn to take the ice water dousing. As luck would have it, our newest uchideshi at the time was Arturo from Bolivia who had just arrived in the United States to become a Nippon Kan uchideshi two days before the tournament. I can imagine that Arturo might have been having thoughts about getting on the next plane home after this introduction to practice at Nippon Kan!
It really doesn’t matter who wins and who loses, this tournament is a great way for Nippon Kan and Enshin Karate students to share time together. As always, Homma Kancho and Joko Ninomiya Kancho enjoy spending the time in a little friendly competition with lot of laughs.
This year Nippon Kan uchideshi take the ice water bath!
Written by
James Lattanzio