My two students and I traveled to Japan on 1st December 2022. This eight days trip consisted of two days of training. We visited and greeted Soshi Kazuyuki Hasegawa(9th Dan) one of my teachers in Japan. It was nice to see Soshi and his family after five years after his 50th Karate anniversary. They warmly welcomed us to his home city Naruto, Tokushima Ken. Sosai Oyama appointed Soshi Hasegawa as the branch chief of Tokushima prefecture in 1971. This Dojo is still on to this day and training is on under Soshi Hasegawa’s direct supervision.
I would like to thank Mrs.Naomi Hasegawa and Miss. Kazumi Hasegawa for taking us sightseeing around their beautiful city. We had the opportunity to visit the Awa Odori memorial Kaikan which showed parts of the largest street festival in Japan. We had two great days with them. We then traveled to Kyoto which was an ancient capital city of Japan.
On day 4 we visited Shizouka prefecture to train under former Uchi deshi(Dormitory student) of Kyokushinkaikan 7th Dan Saiko Shihan Ryuichi Serizawa and now he has established his own full contact Karate organisation Seiku Juku. We attended two training sessions. The first one was the children’s class and the second one was a general class. We had two great training sessions with Shihan Serizawa and his student and had the opportunity to gain new knowledge.
We went sightseeing around the Shizouka ken. We had the chance to see the beautiful Mt.Fuji.
Finally, we visited Sosai Masutatsu Oyama’s grave in Gokokuji cemetery in Tokyo to pay our respect. On the same day, we went to see the Kyokushinkaikan original Honbu Dojo established by Sosai in 1964 which was the place I trained and participated my 2nd Dan examination under Sosai Oyama’s invitation in 1994.
My students Sempai Sudeshan Thiagarajah, Laura Faulds, and I had a wonderful time in Japan. We are looking forward to our next trip in April 2023.
Osu!
Shihan Prasanna Fernando
