I was fourteen when, for the very first time in my life, I tied a white belt around my waist and wore a kimono. Encouraged by my father, who’d seen me being lazy since I dropped basketball, I decided to join a karate club and practice this martial art. My father and I started attending classes every Tuesday and Thursday evening. When he realized I was comfortable enough in class, he dropped the class. I attended Karate classes for over four years and reached blue belt, I quit taking Karate lessons too… I was too busy with college.

I decided not to get rid off my kimono and yesterday, when I got home from work, tried it on after 6 years (it looks like I’ve only grown a couple of centimetres since I was 18. My kimono still fits!). It felt nice on me . The reason why I wore it is because I attended a Iaido lesson today, as an spectator, of course. For those of you that don’t know what Iaido is, it is a martial art that literally means “The way of harmonizing oneself in action”. The iaidokas (Iaido practitioners) reach this way with a sword. A friend of mine from the photographic association practices this martial art (we previously practiced Karate together) and intrigued by what the katas looked like, I decided to attend a class today.

It was so interesting. I found all the moves very nice and different from what I’d seen till this day. It was so knight-ly looking. Very very nice. And even though it was very different from Karate, it was rewarding to know that some of the Japanese words he said during the classes sounded familiar to me. I could still remember the words!

Anyway, I had a beautiful morning reminiscing my karateka days. Dewa mata!.