Bonds
Above is a picture of my team from my time in Japan, Sakaguchi Dojo. They are wonderful people, all of them, and I consider myself extremely lucky to know them.
Japan can be a difficult place for someone who goes there, maybe a little arrogantly speaking close to no japanese as was the case with me. Getting used to the culture, knowing virtually no one, and just trying to get my footing was a trial of sorts. Odds were pretty stacked against me from the start, but everything changed because I met really great people at Sakaguchi Dojo. I no longer felt lost and was happy to belong. I made great friends and have so many good memories training and just being around everyone there. I was truly blessed.
I am writing about my team back there in Tokyo today, because the dojo I trained at closed down this week and I really wish I could have been there for the last couple days. I have a strong bond with everyone there and would have liked to be there at the end. Training there and just seeing everyone day in and day out my time in Tokyo was one of the happiest times of my life. Life was busy but there was always good people around so it was a happy existence.
Things are good though. There’s a new Sakaguchi gym in Yokohama now with my good friends, Yukio, Eriya, and too many other great friends. I miss everyone and hope I can catch up with everyone soon.
Steve Magdaleno
Create Your Badge
Popularity: 14% [?]
To San Diego and Beyond!
Alright so it’s already almost been a week now but none the less, last Sunday I travelled down to San Diego. My good friend, Andy Wang had helped put on this tournament, Choke (The Quickening-2) over at an Undisputed Gym that he teaches at in San Diego. Apparently there’s four Undisputed Gyms in San Diego. I never knew there were so many, whoa! In anycase, the gym was pretty cool, a boxing ring, a large mat area, workout equipment, and even a cool tatoo parlor! ….Now if only I had tatoos.
The tournament seemed to go off without a hitch. It was cheap, competition fee only being 20 bucks. A lot of the winners got free prizes from sponsors which included the likes of gift certificates, suppliments, training gear and I might be missing more. There was even plaques and medals for the winners. So all in all a pretty cool little tournament I must say. In this day and age where it’s the norm to sometimes pay upwards of 100 just to compete, it’s nice to know that there are still some people that will put on tournaments for the sole sake of the sport.
yours truly competed as well. I just had one match in my division against a good guy and friend, Adam Lynn. I think our wrestling was matched up pretty evenly so the sole points scored were a weird little takedown I was able to pull off in the last couple seconds. It was good to compete again for me personally since training alone can get kind of tiresome when you have nothing to train for coming up. Competing is really the end result of the training so when you don’t have that it can get a little frustrating as you can possibly imagine.
Cool Weekend in San Diego, saw some buds, competed, ate, awesome!
Popularity: 13% [?]