Shotokan Karate of America Exhibition & Tournament

I recently attended a karate exhibition and tournament held by Shotokan Karate of America (SKA). It was held inside Little Tokyo’s Terasaki Budokan. While I didn’t stay for the whole tournament, here’s the gist of my experience:

It was a free event and it seems like this is an event that SKA holds annually during Nisei Week. With the tournament being one of many things going on during Nisei Week, I must say I definitely had quite a productive time during the first weekend of Nisei Week.

The exhibition/tournament started off weird in that every attendee was required to fill out a waiver. (If you came in a group, only one person on behalf of the group had to fill it out.) There was no heads up in regards to this and because of that, I didn’t know how to feel about it. I wasn’t sure if this was SKA’s doing or if it was Terasaki Budokan’s doing. I’m thinking it’s the latter since I overheard a staff member explaining that they had changed venues. I’m going to assume that they held their exhibitions/tournaments at a different location previously.

They explain a bit about karate from the getgo so that people clueless to karate can understand what they’re watching as well as what to look for.

In addition to this, they had demonstrations before and after tournament sessions.

It was good to watch overall.

One karate participant that I was not feeling much went excessive contact on every opponent of his. It’s one thing to go excessive contact on one opponent but when it happens to every opponent you compete against? It’s at that point that I think it’s safe to say that it wasn’t a coincidence. I’m going to judge and say this person has poor sportsmanship and I’m not fond of athletes that have poor sportsmanship. You don’t go in to hurt people in order to have an upper edge to win. It’s gross behavior. Of course, I also realize that maybe it just wasn’t his day somehow. (Like, one of those “Freaky Friday” days.) But I felt bad for all (3?) of the guys that got hurt by him. One guy even got a bloody nose from the excessive contact. Not funny. He did get disqualified as the tournament went on, though.

Kids were present and although they weren’t competing against anyone, it was nice to see kids at the exhibition/tournament.

As mentioned earlier, I didn’t stay for the whole exhibition/tournament. I did enjoy my time while there, though. The seating could have been more comfortable, though.