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Koir (Offline)
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12-06-2009, 11:35 AM

Quote:
Originally Posted by YuriTokoro View Post
Hi.
Could you correct my English?

“When will you have fun?”

I used to go to an English conversation school. One of the teachers there had started learning Karate, using the same style I had learned. The coaches that taught me were also teaching him.
He said he would be competing in a Karate tournament, but unfortunately, I didn’t manage to go to see the matches. So the next day, I asked him how he did.
His story was that one of his coaches told him not to enter because there were too many fighters. I don’t know the details. Anyway, he was not able to fight in the tournament.
What surprised me was his words: “They should change the system of the tournament. They now choose the opponents by lot, so sometimes beginners fight advanced students. If beginners fight between beginners, they will have a lot of fun. They can reasonably expect to win.”
I was astonished. “They will have FUN?”
Indeed, in the first-round, most beginners fight against advanced students and lose.
However, nobody had ever thought as he did. Japanese people think that if you want to win, you need to become strong. It would take about three or four years, and it’s not surprising. Try hard! In addition, I say that nobody has ever said they had fun or wanted to have fun in the Karate school. They only wanted to be strong.
Now I know this seems to be a Japanese way of thinking, and foreign people wouldn’t agree.
Still, Karate is not a sport. I can’t call Karate fighters “players”. Am I too serious?

Thank you.
The Japanese concept of challenge and reward seems very intriguing. I can see the wisdom in facing adversity in such a way, even though it is in many ways very different from what I grew up believing.

I can see most of the person's frustration stems from a way of thinking that is somewhat difficult for a new Karate student to accept. As he said, beginners fighting beginners is more enjoyable due to a higher chance of winning matches. In this way, the beginner feels encouraged to continue as he can see results right away.

Though depending on the personality of the beginner, they may not want to advance further. They may have a set of moves that has proven to work, or a mindset that has no reason to change since it succeeds so often. So they stay that way and never truly live up to their potential.

Competing against advanced Karate students can be much more complicated. The chance of losing increases significantly as a beginner's limited skill set meets an advanced student's large set of moves and multiple mindsets based on experience. Losing matches this way certainly gets rid of the type of beginner student talked about earlier, but it can also convince the more motivated students to stop competing.

This kind of student may have the potential to improve greatly beyond status as a beginner, but the competition environment of a more experienced student doesn't allow for much growth. The beginner student may have been simply unlucky in a match, or have a set of moves that could not increase the chance of victory against the advanced student's move set. Whatever the cause, this promising beginner (again, depending on mindset) will see no use in continuing his/her studies and stop practicing karate.

I could go on (if I haven't done so too much already), but that's some of my thoughts on the subject.

As for the revisions, not much had to be done. Some phrase changes to increase clarity of reading, and references to those studying karate as "students" based on previous discussions in this thread.

Hope that helps, Yuri!


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Unfortunately for you, she is not here.

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Last edited by Koir : 12-06-2009 at 11:40 AM.
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