Zaine

Very exciting! I know this is a years long project that is finally coming to a close. I can't wait to see the efforts pay off!

Congrats! Well deserved!

Yeah that is surprising - Sensei Naka publicly cross trains in a lot of styles and produces a lot of content of him doing so. I can sort of see the logic behind some slight restrictions eg. if you are below X grade in shotokan we don't want you to cross train in another karate style yet in case you mess up your techniques but once you are past that point then it's fine (and unrelated styles like judo etc are fine). But a blanket ban is for me a red flag I've certainly heard that line a lot in the past. While I was never forbade from cross training, my sensei strongly recommended against it until I became a sankyu. To ban it altogether, like you say, is a huge red flag.

I agree with you on the white belt comments. There is no reason we should be testing white belts that aren't 100% expected to pass. I can't imagine how disheartening it would be to go into your first test and fail. It would definitely hurt retention not only in new students, but also in older non-black belt ranked students who might see that as unnecessarily cruel.

Playing at the World, 2E Volume 1: The Invention of Dungeons and Dragons by Jon Peterson

Congrats!

I enjoyed Elantris, but you can tell it's one of his earlier (published) works. His writing has definitely evolved and improved over the years. I've only read the four Earthsea books by Le Guin; how is The Language of the Night? That was the impression I got as well. It wasn't bad, just unpolished. The Le Guin book is a collection of essays and speeches she gave on literary criticism. I think it's great, but dry and specialized. If you're interested in criticisms of the treatment of SF/F books and the like, it's awesome.

Witch King by Martha Wells also A Short History of The Hundred Years War by Michael Prestwich

Having come from a line that traces through SMOKA, I can definitely confirm that SMOKA is very conservative when it comes to their approach of karate. Coffman, and Gagne as an extension, really only want to teach karate in the way that they learned it. Coffman in particular is very loyal to the type of martial arts that he learned directly from Soken. While I have my own philosophical issues with this approach (i.e. whether karate should be prescriptive or descriptive, to borrow terms from my educational background), I understand the desire. Luckily for me, my teacher viewed martial arts as a living, evolving thing and broke away from the SMOKA philosophy. My sensei leaned into the MMA-like aspects of the system, and even added ground fighting to the curriculum to make the system more rounded. Nothing so in-depth as BJJ, but enough that we weren't useless on the ground. I have noticed that the amount of SMOKA kata are greater than others, such as Kuda lineage. More than that, however, old lists from SMOKA websites indicated that the amount of kata after Shodan are exponentially larger. Mostly they're repeats of kata already learned just in the "Shorinji" style.

I don't think that this is a new worry. I hope that this fear, which I share, is just a result of me not being aware of the breadth of practice for our system(s). Just recently I've met a lot of people who are Matsumura-Seito from all over the place. It gives me hope that the system isn't as small as I originally thought.

Elantris by Brandon Sanderson. also The Language of the Night by Ursula K. Le Guin

That is my understanding as well. In fact, as far as classification goes, my sensei would separate kata into Matsumura kata and Shorinji kata. Seisan, Wansu, and Ananku were Shorinji kata. According to some sources I have found, like old kata lists, from Coffman and Gagne's sites, later Shorinji kata were taught after black belt but were largely Shorinji versions of kata that we had already learned.

I absolutely loved the first 2 seasons of Seven Deadly Sins. Then the animation studio changed and the animation took a steep, steep dive and I stopped watching it.

Fifty Years of Dungeons and Dragons Edited by Premeet Sidhu, Marcus Carter, and Jose P. Zagal.

This certainly counts! Comics and Manga are reading! It's how a lot of people get into reading (it's how my daughter did). It's exactly how i am encouraging my sons reading too! He gets to read Manga (nothing bad, he is trying One Piece and Naruto) and has the incentive that if he gets good enough then he can watch the anime shows since they are only subtitled (no dub versions available of them on UK crunchyroll) That's awesome! My kid got started with My Hero Academia and some others. She still prefers Manga and Comics as her main mode of reading, but she reads a lot of traditional books as well now as they catch her fancy.

The varied answers here make me wonder who the test is for. Obviously, on the surface level, the test is for the student, the passing of which will result in their black belt. But the question stands as a way to observe the egos of those involved. My own test was about 4 - 5 hours, which I think is a pretty good baseline. In it, I had to perform the entire curriculum of our system, from the first kata to the last. This also included a large amount of sparring in various styles and ways, from the bare knuckled style of Kyokushin, to the beat down style of MMA fighters. It was an exhausting test, and one that injured me and others as I struggled to prove that I was worthy of the honor of being a black belt. In this last sentence lies the crux of my question. Was the test to prove my worth to myself, or my sensei? On some levels, the answer is both. Tests exist to put students under pressure to prove their knowledge. Had the test been 30 minutes long, I think that I would have been disappointed. However, had the test been much longer than it was, I would begin to wonder if this was for my benefit, or for the ego of my instructor. We assume that good instructors do not test students who are not ready. In that, a lot of tests become mere formality. If we mess up, that's okay, because the test was meant to test whether we stay cool under pressure, or if we break. Breaking is the thing that loses us the test. When I forgot a nunchaku kata mid-test, I wasn't pinged by my instructor for doing so because I just kept going. The observers not from my school had no idea that the kata I performed wasn't correct until they were informed later. It's something that I tell competitors at karate competitions. I don't know their kata. If they make a mistake, don't let me know. Just roll with it (sometimes literally) and pretend that you meant to do it. Back to the question. At good test is balanced between the egos of the instructor and student. There is a give and a take, where both need to be satisfied with the performance. Both need to feel like the rank was earned, otherwise regret forms and the relationship with the rank itself sours. No one wants to see an underserving Shodan, and no Shodan wants to feel like they didn't give it their all. However, it seems to me that the longer the test becomes, breaking even 10+ hours, the more it becomes about the instructor. At what point is the instructor's ego being fed more than the student? Putting the idea of testing fees and the like aside, the closer we get to the 10 hour mark, the more I wonder if the instructor is putting undue pressure on the student just because they can. What is the point of a 10 hour test? Does the school have that much content to go through that it takes that long? Is there an extensive lunch break in the middle to make sure that the instructors, and especially the student, is fed and properly hydrated? Is it just a 10 hour slog where the student is doing nothing but the content of their curriculum? I think that if you are able to sit in on a shodan test, because I have found that nidan and above are generally lighter, that you can learn not only a lot about the school, but even more about the person proctoring the test.

As far as I know, my branch of Shorin Ryu doesn't do that kata. Descended from Soken Matsumura, to Soken Hohan, to Kuda Yuichi, eventually to me. Interestingly, my branch of Matsumura Seito does do Seisan. However, my lineage branches differently, from Soken Hohan to Kise Fusei.

Congrats!

The Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman

This certainly counts! Comics and Manga are reading! It's how a lot of people get into reading (it's how my daughter did).

This book was cute but it wasn't for me. I did not finish it. If you have young readers, I think that this would be the perfect book for them! I am now reading The Frugal Wizard's Handbook for Surviving Medieval England by Brandon Sanderson. I thoroughly enjoyed all of Brandon Sanderon's Secret Projects; The Frugal Wizard was a very cool departure from what I'm used to reading from him. Have you read his other Secret Projects? I have not, but I've added them to my list. I really enjoyed this book and read it a lot quicker than I usually read books.

Foundation by Isaac Asimov

This book was cute but it wasn't for me. I did not finish it. If you have young readers, I think that this would be the perfect book for them! I am now reading The Frugal Wizard's Handbook for Surviving Medieval England by Brandon Sanderson.

I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons by Peter Beagle.

I just finished Game Wizards by Jon Peterson. It's about the history of Dungeons and Dragons. If you're into TTRPGs, I highly recommend it, very interesting stuff about the rise and decline of TSR as a company. I've moved onto Dreadful by Caitlin Rozakis.