Cape Town – Ashihara Dojo

A training session was held at the Ashihara Karate Kokusai Honbu dojo of Kaicho Hoosain Narker. A brief report written by Ashihara Kaicho was ….

This week we at the Ashihara Karate AKI Honbu Dojo in Cape Town, South Africa, were once again honoured by the visit of Kenji Nakazawa Sensei, the Kancho of Ryuseikan AikiSambo, a system he developed after years of training in Yoshinkan Aikido and Russian Sambo which he fused to form Aikisambo. I met Kenji Sensei many years ago and also stayed with him in Yokosuka, Japan. He had shown a great interest in our Sabaki concepts, and have adopted many principles into his Aikisambo. He loves Cape Town and regularly visits and a get together and training at our dojo is a must. On this trip he was accompanied by an Aikikai Aikido 6th Dan, Mamoru Toshioka Shihan who also taught some of his Aikido technique. As usual, I had of our Yudansha showing the similarities to Ashihara Karate.

The students enjoyed themselves and we were joined by many of our friends including Abubakr Petersen Sensei (Kyokushin), Kamal Hamdulay Shihan (KMAC Goju Ryu), Nazeem Holmes (American Kenpo), Reuben Snell (RJ Kenpo), Francis Billy Balie Shihan (Goju Ryu) and also joining us was Joe van Rensburg Shihan (now 85 years old) and Omer Suleman (Shobukan Goju) as well as Kenji Sensei’s South African deshi’s: Otto Pretorius and Gordon Douglas.

Time flies by so quickly and some of the students had to leave due to Exams, but those that stayed until the end had a super time.