Initially, I tried to look for a Kyokushin dojo. There wasn't a Wado dojo down in San Jose and I was interested in full contact karate. I contacted one of the kyokushin dojos in the LA area and found that there was not a Kyokushin but an Oyama Karate dojo in San Jose. At that point I searched the web and found the Oyama dojo's web page. Oh the glories of the internet. Anyways, I went to check it out. The people there were really nice, a lot of kiai in their training. Next week I went to train, and joined the dojo soon after.

   I expected since this is a full contact style the training to be somewhat different from the Berkeley Karate Club. Well, in some ways it is, but in another ways it's not. We train 3 times a week for 2 hours. About 15 minutes of warm ups, about an hour of basics, then kata and/or sparring. We don't spar in every practice, maybe once or twice a week.

   In the beginning I went to the beginner's class, one hour before the regular adult class, so I was training for three hours for the first month or so. Before we started, we always clean all the dojo floor and mirrors with wet rags and all. The place is actually located in a warehouse/garage type place among a bunch of car repair shops. It is pretty much open to the outside, so it was kinda chilly in the winter, and cleaning the floors with wet rags wasn't the thing I was looking forward to.

   Something different that we do here is that we train our strikes and blocks in what's called a sanchin stance. It's like the Wado-ryu kiba dachi with one foot in front, with the front foot heel lined up with the rear foor toe. I think it's the same stance as in Wado-ryu's seishan kata. With this stance you can get some forward-backward motion along with the left-right motion you get with the regular kiba dachi.

   Well, and I guess you guys want to know about the sparring part as well. Even though this is full contact, the roughness is kept pretty low, and things are very well under control. With a kyokushin-style full contact karate, all strikes to the head with the hands and head are illegal. So no face high punches (thank god). All kicks (save groin) are allowed. The emphasis is geared toward solid, effective contact against the opponent. The result is a somewhat closer distancing with each other, and some of the body feighnting techniques that we use in Wado-ryu is replaced with more of setting up the opponent using combinations. Because of the distancing, it's somewhat easier to do the jyodan mawashi geri (head high roundhouse). I learned to keep my guard up fairly quickly. Also the low kick becomes a very effective kick, so that's used a lot in combination with strikes (like tobikomi-zuki, gyaku-zuki, gedan mawashi geri).

   Comparing to Wado-ryu it's a very different approach to sparring, but a lot of the difference is the result of difference in kumite rules. The mentality of the sparring itself remains the same, but the strategies and techniques might change.

   So far training at Oyama Karate has been a very rewarding experience for me. I was lucky enough to find a really good dojo. Lots of kiai and people who train hard. It's also given me a new perspective on looking at Wado-ryu, and, well, let me tell you that we have a very good club at Cal. So, enough of my rant, let's train! Osu!

-Shin Akiya