Sunday, June 19, 2005

My Dojo



I'm been fighting a nasty cold and sore throat all week and decided to get some rest today. That idea lasted about an hour. While trying to rest, I thought it might be a good time to work some more on turning my living room into a dojo. I started moving a bunch of small stuff out of the room, but eventually found myself moving a large arcade cabinet and couch up some stairs into another room.

It took me a while, but I finally cleared out enough stuff so I now have a good amount of room to practice karate. No more worrying about accidentally hitting things while practicing shihonuke. There's even enough room for doing pinan nidan.

In the left edge of the picture you can see some chishi I made. They are basically circular pieces of concrete with a wooden handle. They are traditional Okinawan exercise tools - you use them to strengthen your wrists, arms, etc. This web site has some more pictures demonstrating the use of chishi: http://www.wonder-okinawa.jp/023/eng/012/003/.