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.
Koir, thanks as always.