Kata In Action

I knew him from the early days in martial arts.

Same age, and a few ranks ahead of me, we always attended the same seminars and workshops despite having different teachers.

Personality wise opposites, but our dedication to budo and training is what cemented our friendship.

As we came up in the ranks and decisions had to be made, he went in one direction and I went in another.

Yet we still saw each other a couple of time over the years as the same seminars or when a famous sword teacher would visit the city.

A 10 PM Facebook DM was a bit out of place.

It was a picture of one of the sword teachers in Japan who would be visiting again soon.

Some back and forth videos and some nice light discussion before he asked me what he really wanted.

Budo has its rules and ways going about things, and I expected a question, just not that question.

Did I remember when the three of us were at a seminar in the city, the fun we had, and hanging out after.

I did.

I remembered the other guy.

The guy who trained in the dojo with me, who was my sempai at the time.

How many training hours did we put in?

More than some marriages.

But then he left the dojo.

Most people leave and don’t come back.

Fewer people leave and come back.

A handful leave and have made it so they can never come back.

I asked how he was doing, and who he was training with these days, and got an update on his current teacher.

I gave the budo answer that I never hear of his teacher before.

Switching my tone and breaking my stride from budo to American guy I fired back.

I guess he isn’t happy right?

There was a pause in the DM for a bit as imagine my friend was trying to figure out how to respond.

What he wanted to ask was if he could come back to the dojo, with me being the senior student now in the dojo, testing those waters, what would the possibility be like?

A soft kind of ask.

While it would never be my decision to make, or even be consulted on, that didn’t mean I would help out. They made their choice by leaving in the wrong way and the only thing I had was my silence regarding it.

The pause in the DM was going on too long now so I filled the space.

It would be nice if another particular sword teacher came to visit the city, a suggestion we both knew would never ever happen due to logistics.