2008-09-16

Akita Karate Tournament

My first karate tournament was the other day. The 日本空手協会秋田全県大会 (All-Akita Karate Tournament), in Kisakata. The tournaments are single elimination, random seeds in your age class (adult male). There are two events: kata and kumite.

Heian Sandan (1 of 2) video
Heian Sandan (2 of 2) video

In kata, you and your opponent do the same routine and the four judges vote. In the first kata, Heian Sandan, the judges split 2-2. So we did another kata, Heian Nidan, and I lost.

Heian Nidan video

Kumite is two minutes long, or the first to get two points. You get a point by punching or kicking your opponent in the torso or head. The other guy hit me after about 30 seconds, so I needed to hit him at least once. But his defense was better than my offense, so when time ran out I lost.

Kumite (1 of 4) video
Kumite (2 of 4) video
Kumite (3 of 4) video
Kumite (4 of 4) video

My cheering section was top-notch. Of course the kids and moms from my karate club were there to cheer, and so were Sophie, Matthew, Jez, Kato, and Takahashi. Thanks for the video, Sophie.

Creative Commons License
This work (the text of this blog entry) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
For attribution of this work, link to this page and include my name, Douglas Perkins.

3 comments:

Marjorie said...

That's pretty awesome to watch.

(Although kumite 4 and 5 are secretly the same video.)

Douglas Perkins said...

Fixed.

Nirvana said...

It sounds odd, but it is really nice to watch you move.