Laurentina

After years of Karate practice with middleweight Gis I received a new heavyweight Gi as gift from relatives. It's an italian brand Marzialsport (you don't know it for sure but that's not the point) one of the most expensive of their line, very nice thick cotton and good looking cut. Anyway I have a problem with the pants drawstring, it's very thick and when I tie my belt it painfully digs in my hip and the jacket drawstring in between makes it worse I'm used to drawstring pants (I'm a judo-ka since I was a kid) but this is the only pants I have problems with maybe it's because they got me a Gi that's too large and long for my size? (it's unreturnable as it was on sale) being a slightly curvy girl it's hard to tie the belt lower because it always rides up during the training. I'm a 160cm tall girl and the Gi size says 185cm I had to hem sleeves but pants are perfect length after a good shrinkage in very hot water plus dryer action, maybe just too large in leg girth but I don't mind. If you have any hints to avoid hip torture when tying belt over jacked and pants it is appreciated, OSU

We are traditional so we all wear a white karategi with no school patches, we can keep only the manufacturer patches that came with the gi when we bought it.

In my school we go more easy with heian katas required to grade... white belt to yellow = taikyoku shodan yellow to orange = heian shodan orange to green = heian nidan green to blue = heian sandan blue to brown = heian yondan brown 2nd kyu to brown 1st kyu = heian godan of course in class you also train katas of grades above yours, Im blue belt and I know all heians

I ride my Vespa to go to school

I love Heian Nidan, it made me win many competitions when I was green belt Now that Im blue belt Im more focused on Heian Yondan but my favorite is still Heian Nidan

I play guitar and when I have free time I like to play with my PSP or Nintendo DS

There are many bargains on Ebay so I guess you should look there if you want to save some bucks online. You can always buy at your dojo if your sensei sells them at reasonable price. In my school the sensei let us free to chose our gis (color must be all white) he sells them in the dojo only if you ask him or else you can go buy them somewhere else and he really doesnt care. He isnt interessed in business anyway. Here in Italy and in some european countries we have a sportswear chain called Decathlon that sells very nice Gis (even competition WKF approved ones) for a fair price. So living in a rather small town almost everyone that needs a spare gi goes there I have an Adidas Gi and got my spare one from Decathlon.

I pay 30€/month (more or less 40$) our school doesnt have long time contracts, you pay at the beginning of each month you want to attend.

We are a traditional Shotokan Dojo so the all white uniform is a must for us. I'd prefer black though.

I'd be a black belt judoka... since I left Judo when I was brown belt to do Karate

Same here, pony tails are nice. For Kata competition I usually braid my hair in a long single braid. Im a girl and I like to keep my hair long

In my Karate Shotokan school we have: White (7th kyu) Yellow (6th kyu)) Orange (5th kyu) Green (4th kyu) Blue (3rd kyu) Brown (2nd,1st kyu) Black (shodan) in my Judo school the belt progression was the same...