2014 – Dinner with Sensei We were not be able to train at the Kobe YMCA due to some administrative issue about not being a member. Sensei felt bad since we had communicated just a few days before and thought everything was all set. My wife and I were in Japan for our usual once or twice a year trip to visit her family and to train. After talking with the receptionist for a few minutes to make sure we knew how to avoid the situation in the future, we all sat down to watch the class while a junior instructor took over. Sensei invited us to dinner and we happily agreed, leaving after the first half hour. He apologized over and over but we knew it was a start-up issue since the karate club and moved to the YMCA just a week before. We settled into an izakaya style restaurant near the train station. Izakayas are my favorite because they usually have a great ambience and a wide variety of food and drink, and are mostly moderately priced, although these days in Japan some of them are trying to be more upscale, with comparably higher prices. We immediately started catching up. I had trained with sensei in 2007 and 2008, two to three times a week while commuting between Japan and the USA for business.

2007 – But First Things First… The company I contracted to had leased an apartment for me on the fourteenth floor of a twenty-four floor-mansion (in Japan a mansion is basically an apartment building). It was convenient for me since it was an easy thirty-minute train ride to Akashi for work and twenty minutes to downtown Kobe, a fun town with lots of restaurants and parks along the river and, more importantly, also where the Kobe JKA dojo was located. My first two days in Kobe were spent in a hotel near the station. The apartment lease apparently started on a Monday, but I had wanted to arrive earlier in order to reduce jet lag affect, not wanting to arrive and start work on the same day. My sponsor at the company asked me to stay six weeks for the initial visit so the employees could get used to working with me and to get a good start on the technical program I was to lead. The apartment was a nice one bedroom with a living room, kitchen, and bathroom, called a 1LDK in Japan. It was bigger than most I have seen in Japan. Also, since it would be my residence for the next year and a half, I could leave most of my clothes in the bedroom closet and travel back and forth between Japan and the U.S. with just a backpack. The lobby was large and decorated much like a nice hotel with sitting areas, a small Japanese Garden and a restaurant. From the apartment it was an easy ten-minute walk to Hyogo station for commuting to work and to many restaurants, grocery stores, cleaners, and a fitness center, along with the beautiful park. All in all, it was a comfortable situation. After the first six weeks, I would be working in Akashi for three to four weeks, then fly home for two weeks, often shuttling between Detroit and Peoria, then back to Japan. This was the schedule for eighteen months. One Monday I reported to work and started what was to be a very hands-on, and stressful job as the leader of their APQP (advanced product quality planning) program. Monday night I met the apartment manager who showed me around the area, took me up to my apartment, explained how all the appliances worked, told me when and where to take all the trash (very important in Japan). We sat down for a chat and eventually I asked him if there were any Shotokan dojos in the area. He said he would look into it. A few days later he stopped by in the evening and gave me the address of the YMCA in Kobe, where Uno sensei taught classes. It was a JKA dojo. I was excited and looking forward to my first class the following week on Tuesday. The rest of the week was busy. After work I walked around exploring, the immediate area between the apartment and the station, scouting all the shops that would be necessary for my stay in Hyogo, trying to remember what the apartment manager had showed me. Also, the first week was important for meeting the management and employees with whom I would be working. It went smoothly enough, especially when the jet lag finally wore off, which was good because I had to give an all-employee speech and presentation that Friday.