A girl's first inspiration...

Well, hello there, reader! 

Probably your random search for budo, karate, martial arts on google brought you here by accident. Probably not, and you might as well have used my link to come and visit my blog/diary/written journey on martial arts (probably the second, right?). In any case, I decided to start documenting parts of my journey in martial arts, maybe as a mechanism to cope with the current situation of lockdown (partial or full, it may change by any day) or even, well...just because I feel like writing again! In any case, for a second time within this year, the training opportunity was taken away from us as a preventive measurement against Covid-19 (and, let's be honest, because of the stupidity of a lot of people and the fact that they cannot cooperate and follow the measures in the first place!!!!). So, here I am, locked up again, away from my fellow budoka, my dojo and my keiko.

So, lately a bunch of things have been going around in my mind. The gist of it is mainly what all these years of me being into martial arts actually mean to me. Ok, I will admit, I did finish the second season of Cobra Kai (I kinda binged it) and, at the same time, I have been experiencing the disappointment of having to cancel keiko after keiko because of the measurements. That left me hanging, sad and most of all, contemplating what budo actually means to me and how can I survive one month without physically moving my ass! 

And that's where it kicked in! I will sound more than cliche and kitsch, but please bear with me when I quote (yes!!!!) mr. Miyagi and his most famous wisdom quote "Karate here, karate here, karate not here" - well, you know what I mean, I am not going to further analyze the scene :D . And if you don't know, please free up to 2 hours from a Sunday evening and watch the movie, please!!!!!!! 

So for me, this takes me way back to when I watched the movie. I don't even remember when it was, it was on Greek tv channels at least once every month, so you get the point and the level of brainwashing it took to get me to love traditional martial arts and Japanese culture (it literally only took one view of the movie, to be honest!). 

Growing up in a small city in Greece in the '90s, one could not expect to find a variety of options for martial arts, with the exception of the Olympic sports Tae-kwon-do and maybe judo. So, my mom's opinion about it was ''oh why don't you try ballet instead?'' (no, she didn't really ask, but you know, it's greek moms, how much of a say do you think I had in the matter?). I did try. I also quit after 2 weeks. Not for me, guys, I might play the piano, but delicate things like that...uh-oh not my cup of tea! It took quite a few years of constant workout, athletics trainings, traditional dances (did I mention I like traditional things? ^^ ), all effortlessly combined and managing to keep my explosive character at hand (not so much, combined with teenage years, if you ask me, but oh well, I didn't get into fights, right?) but still, my passion for martial arts was far from being satiated, even exposed! I didn't know that I was going to find the answer to my calls quite soon after graduating from high school. Still later than many anime characters, but come on, they have to fight alien monsters from the age of 10, so screw that! 

Until then, I was keeping my training up and watching Karate kid movies (ok, and Xena the warrior princess) on repeat for many many many years to come. 

...to be continued...

これを読んでくれてありがとう 🙏

みんな、またね