...with a bow

I made a decision on the 2nd of November to return to training in karate-do.  I was still lurg-ridden, so didn't start immediately. After looking about and trying (and failing) to find a Chidokan dojo I could attend (there is what purports to be such in North Sydney; it's too far for me to get there in time for the training sessions, and later I learned they're not in fact affiliated with Chidokan proper - either Japan or international), I managed to make contact with my sensei from three decades past, Kancho-sensei Jack Sims; he offered to provide distance instruction, and I began in earnest on the 21st of November. Today, at the end of my month of daily karate photographs, I looked at my training log, and found that I have trained on twenty-six of those forty-one days. I'm quite pleased with myself.

Today's photo is both an end and a beginning. Master Funakoshi wrote, in his Niju Kun (twenty instructions, for students of karate) that karate begins and ends with a bow ("Hitotsu, karate-do wa rei ni hajimari rei ni owaru koto o wasuruna”) - and this photo does not indicate whether it came at the beginning or end of today's training. While this is the end of my month of karate-themed photographs, it's still just the beginning of my journey back to karate-do. I am wearing a shirobi (white belt) due to my long absence from training, but hold (or at least previously achieved) the rank of shodan. Though a black belt is seen by most as an end goal or achievement, it is in fact merely a beginning: sho - first; dan - level. In quite a number of techniques and kata I think I have regained a good part of my skills, but in others I feel very much a beginner again.

Bettr; Flickr.

There’s also B&W. 

DA35/2.4;K30.