3 Steps For Perfect Defense

Karate is first shown to US military people who stationed in Okinawa after World War II. A soldier who learned Karate in Okinawa opened first dojo in US in 1945. Mas Oyama, founder of Kyokushin Karate, traveled in US and taught US people in FBI, Marine, and Police in 1950s. The Kung Fu movies in 1960s and 70s boosted popularity of martial arts and Karate. Many Americans have learned and mastered Karate today.

This martial art has very basic principle. It is, "Karate is only for defense." As a part of Karate community member, I have thought about this principle long time. This long thinking may not be giving me final conclusion, but thinking includes what would be the best possible defense. The followings may not be my final conclusion, but it would benefit you if you try to catch meanings behind them.

1. Avoid going to or being in dangerous places.
2. Be ready to run away. Running away is your first priority.
3. Get help. Shout for getting attention from neutral people around.

You found those 3 steps have nothing to do with defense skills. But they are important defense mindsets. Let me explain one by one.

1. Avoid going to or being in dangerous places.
This step refers to your mental foundation. Suppose you take 3 to 5 years old child of yours to the place where you visit for the first time. You will do whatever necessary to avoid danger for your own kid. For you number 1 priority must be the safety of your child. Defense is nothing about showing how strong you are. It is not about using your skills. Always think you have small child of yours to defend. Then you will never think going to dangerous places.

2. Be ready to run away. Running away is your first priority.
Sun-Zu is an ancient Chinese Strategist who established many fighting or war techniques. He lost both of his legs in his first war, but he later fought more than 100 times and never lost one. He was not just a war strategist, he was a policy maker in his kingdom. In his book of strategy, after he explained all of his strategy, he added the last chapter, "Running away is your first priority." He advised his King that it does not make sense to keep fighting until King is killed in the war. It is more important for the king to run away if losing and return back to his country for the sake of country and people. Not fighting but run away is more difficult than fighting. You should not care if someone call us Chicken or weak. Run away and secure safety.

3. Get help. Shout for getting attention from neutral people around.
Even you are a master of martial arts, you are not professional about fighting. It is always better choice to leave professions to professionals. When you are in danger, do not fight. Call police. Ask for help of the people who are around you trying to be neutral. They will help you when asked. But they will not move an inch if not asked.
Even you are confident about your defending skills in the martial arts you practice, it is important to be aware of these 3 steps for your defense strategy. You will agree that these 3 steps are part of defense mindset. If you practice these 3 steps for your defense strategy, your defense is perfect and completed.

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Power of Being "Helpful"

It was a historical drama in Japanese Language TV Broadcasting here in San Francisco Bay Area.  So, I do not know how much it could be true.  But there was something which struck me to the extent that I wanted to share it with you here.  The age was the end of Edo Shogun Era.  There were lots of fighting and killing that time between Shogun side and Emperor side.  The ideology was everything and people kill, die, and fight for their ideology.  It was time for confusion for giving birth to new borne Japan.

While majority of Samurai were fighting each other for their own ideology, there was one Samurai trying to be a merchant.  He was originally one of ideology man.  He was against his clan's policy and put into a jail.  In jail, he met a merchant and learned goods value varies depending on peoples needs.  Out of jail, he bought a lot of wood materials.  He thought there were needs and market.  Yes, there are.  Most of houses were old and farmers and lower Samurais were living in half broken houses that time.  He was right.

However, he could not sell even single wood material until one day in his effort to sell his woods, he offered farmer family that he would repair their wall if they buy wood materials from him.  After he started to offer repairing houses for the people who buy wood materials from him, his business started to take off.  Soon he sold out his wood and could start to grow big.  He grew real big. Soon his company started to take government deals for transporting.  He is the founder of Mitsubishi Corporation, Yataro Iwasaki.

This story tells us 3 things. 
1)  Even the legendary modern merchant of Japan had to go through difficult time. 
2)  We cannot think light of power of "Service".  Repairing house is secondary for him and for his customer, but the customers did not buy wood material until they could get the service. 
3)  It is not material, but people's mind which makes a deal.  It is power of being "Helpful".  People buy from other people who they believe to be "Helpful".


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Understanding the Japanese Basic Principle on Learning

Have you watched the movie, "Karate Kid"? It was a big loss that we lost Pat Morita who played Teacher Miyagi Role in the movie. He was one of the great Japanese American actors who can play original Japanese role. Talking back to the movie, Teacher Miyagi asked his student Daniel to paint the fence, wax the car, and sand the floor. Daniel, the boy, was puzzled why his teacher asks him to do these works, instead of practicing hitting and kicking skills. The teacher did not say a word until the boy finished his work. There were 2 reasons why the teacher Miyagi asked the boy these works.

1. These works taught the boy basic defense move of Karate.
2. The boy could build his body by doing these works.

In the modern Japan, even my Karate Dojo did not force students to do this kind of training any more. The teachers would tell you how to build your body and would use bodybuilding machines. However, they still let student wipe the floor by using a swab, not by a mop. In the process of wiping floor in low position help a lot in building your lower body. At the same time, students learn the spirit to respect their dojo by cleaning the floor by their own hands.

Usually, teachers themselves take their own swabs clean their dojo. Elder students do the same. Junior students copy what their teachers and elders do. For beginners of Karate or any Martial Art, copying plays important role in learning process. In Karate Kata (Defending and Fighting Form), even senior students stare at how their teacher moves and copy every and all of his moves.

Japanese word "Manabu" is usually translated to English as "Study" or "Learn". However, the process of Japanese style "Manabu" is a little bit different from "Study" or "Learn" in English. The origin of the word "Manabu" is "Manebu", its meaning is "Copy". In Martial Art, students in their learning process gain a lot by copying what their seniors are doing.

In other professional field in Japan, this style of learning is widely adopted. Medical trainees are trained to copy their teachers are doing. Beginner cocks are not to be taught anything for first 6 to 10 months. They need to copy what their chefs are doing and lick the dishes, which were used by chefs for their cooking. This style of learning by copying has several advantages, no matter what you are trying to master:

1. You can establish your base by copying. Firmly founded and established base will be great help to build your own design castle on it.
2. Copying can help to form uniformity among students studied in same place. Uniformity is the base for building good quality skills and services.
3. Proven and established base by copying will give you base for you to get back when you have problems. It works like a carrier ship for fighter jets.


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How Can We Be a Good International Communicator?

When we think about international communication, No. 1 tool for communication is language. Do you study a foreign language? What is the motivation for you to study foreign language? How would you select a foreign language you hope to master?
Number of native English speakers is 4.68% of world population. It is 2nd largest next to Chinese, 13.22%. Among English speaking population, USA is 67.2%, UK 16.9%, Canada 5.8%, Australia 4.5%, others 5.5%. What we could see from these figures are as follows:

1. The portion of English speaking population is unexpectedly small.
2. Among English speaking population, USA shares 2/3 of entire figure.

These figures do not include "English speaking as 2nd language" or "people who uses English as business or public language". Most of Northern European business people, who I met, could speak fluent English. Singapore uses English for education. Indian does, too. We can imagine how difficult to know how many in the world use English for some purpose. Rapid development of Internet accelerated this trend. English is the most commonly used, most influential, and most powerful language in world communication. Language ability of English is essential for business, very useful, and powerful in communication.

English is 2nd language for me, too. I am glad that I studied English. English was the most powerful and useful tool for communication in my field of international business.

But there is a question. Is language the most important pre-requisite in world communication? After 20+ years of international business, and English, I cannot help concluding that there is something that is more important than language.

I would like to explain taking 3 examples from my friends. First one is a Japanese. He was an engineering manager in my previous employment. He could speak a little bit of English but he had difficulty speaking and understanding the language. His English was far away from fluent. But, he was the one making sure that his American or foreigner visitors stay comfortable in Japan with his company. When one of them became sick, he stayed up all night in his hospital until his visitor recovered next morning. He was receiving a lot of Christmas Cards from his foreigner friends in every Christmas. Unfortunately, he died young, in his late 40s. In his funeral, more than 300 condolence messages were arrived from all over the world.

Second friend of mine is a Singaporean. He visited Japan every year in summer. He was half studying and half working. In one hot morning, he was seated in crowded commuting train in Tokyo. One old Japanese lady stood in front of him. He offered his seat without hesitation. The Japanese old lady thanked him and seated. I was watching them close by. The old Japanese lady was talking to him in Japanese. He was speaking back to her in half English and half Chinese. I do not know how much they could understand each other, but they were enjoying their conversation.

The last and most important friend of mine is an American. He was my boss in my New York days. He is still mentor and 2nd father to me. He is a smart businessperson. Although he could not speak any Japanese, many Japanese staff including myself trusted him, always wanted to talk with him, and listened to his opinion. When I asked him what is his way of communication, he answered that it is simple, he treated his Japanese friends like he treats his American friends. He added he see the difference of behaviors in Japanese, but he stopped being upset. He said he always try to enjoy the difference and admire the same.

Before being a good communicator, we need to be a good person. My boss used to be taught me that.

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Let's be a good marchant - 3 basics for business person

I have long been wondered why merchants, especially successful ones, are given some certain image of "Grumpy", "Greedy", "Cold Blooded", "Suspicious", "Sneaky", and "Prejudiced".  Typical are "Scrooge" of "Christmas Carol", "Shylock" of "Merchant of Venice".  Not just in classical stories, how about "Gordon Gekko" in modern movie "Wall Street"?

Even in my original cultural background, Japanese merchants also appears as greedy and sneaky money hungry bad character who always have behind the door or under-table deals with corrupted governor or politician.  They always end up down the drain jailed or killed by heroes.  It seems to be the merchants are more or less treated as not so good being or necessary evil, even.

For one thing, there are some historical reason that Nights or worriers govern countries in Mideaval Centuries for relatively long time. These worriers used to look down on the people who make money. In last days of Aristcrats age, even merchants were enemy to the governing aristcrats, since aristcrats needed to borrow money from merchants without any expectation to return them.

Are these bad images realty in successful merchant?  It seems to me really successful merchants are a lot different from those images.  A merchant is a business person.  In order for a business person to be successful, such he or she can not be "grumpy", "greedy", and "sneaky" type of person.  Actuality is opposite.  A grumpy, greedy, and sneaky person can never be successful in business.  Business is more or less personal relation based activities.  If a shop owner is not friendly, open minded, and easy to talk, you will never shop in that kind of owner's shop.

Instead, if you find sales person to be "friendly", "open minded", "approachable", and "easy to talk with", you will be glad to talk with this kind of person for your shopping.  Basically, the factors to be successful in business are nothing much different from being a nice person.  If you were offered a same product from "grumpy" person and "cheerful" person, you would definitely buy from "cheerful" person.  They are 3 easy and simple factors:

1.  Be friendly
2.  Be helpful
3.  Be useful

Lastly, I would like to add my humble experience meeting with leaders of world class prestigious and established companies in the field of electric, electronics, computers, software.  Any and all leaders, founders, bosses of these companies were polite, approachable, friendly, and open minded.  So, do not worry about merchants classical images.  Let's be a good "Merchant".

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There are some things, which never change.

Do you remember the movie, "The Matrix -The Revolution" (Last episode of the series 3 episodes), captain Niobi said "There are some things which never change.  There are things change".

There are some things, which I have, therefore I can offer.  In this way, I can be helpful and useful.  But there are some things I do not have.  Simply I cannot offer.  Therefore I cannot be helpful and useful.  Is this true?  Are things this simple.  Is this the end of the story?

As long as you have access or know how to access to the things which you do not have, you are still able to offer it to others.  It is very simple.  You can get them from others who has things you need but do not have.  That is the action of "Fill the Missing Link".  In order for you to enable that, there are several prerequisites.  Largest prerequisites are the following points.  I will later in separate articles, discuss about details.  There are more factors than just contacts.

1.  You need to know the people who you think has the thing which you do not have.

2.  You can freely contact, talk, and ask such a person who have things you do not have access to, right now.

3.  You need to have mental strength to accept things which you do not have and stand up to ask for help to fill it.

Once again the business base is a personal relationship.  There more you have access to the database of people, you have more access to the things which you do not have right now.

Then, you find that you are no longer afraid of "Missing Link", which you will be able to "Fill" quickly by utilizing your personal contact data base.

If you can build your database
networked to the world, and you have mentality to build "a relationship with different cultural background", your database would be huge.

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Emotional IQ - Martial Arts Training Helps

Why do you need mental strength in business?

It does not matter what kind of sports, Baseball, Football, Tennis, Golf, Basketball, and so force, any and all famous and successful sports athletes talk about "Mental Strength".  For example, it is not easy to focus and concentrate on the shot in Golf when everybody is watching.  It would be even more difficult if the golfer has some personal issues, family problem, or legal matters.  To win and successful in sports, an athlete must have very strong and stable mind which will not be affected by any outer influence or instability of his mind.

In case of martial arts, such as Karate, Judo, Kendo, Kung-Fu, maintaining such mental strength and stability of mind is the most important factor since win or lose is the matter of life or death.  I practiced some of martial arts and personally know how important it is.  70-80% of winning or losing are decided not by the level of skills, but by how stable one could maintain in his mind.  So, it is very important to train your mind in martial arts to become master of arts to the extend that one is unbeatable and trust worthy teaching and leading his successors.

I have long been wondered why people do not talk much about mental strength and stability in business.  It was 12 years ago when I spun out a company I worked for 20 years and started my own business.  There were a lot of business and personal problems in immigration, divorce, failure, cheating, business lies, short capital, not enough money for investment, etc...  I can fill at least a page of my notebook with the problems I had.  Maybe it is a matter of daily life for employed people in working in a business.  It may be why they do not talk much about mental strength.  But, what I found in my trial of own business was quite opposite.  Business is like a life-staking fight in martial art using real swords which can sharply cut.  If you do not have strength of your mentality, methodology of brushing up your mental status, attitude of constantly fighting and conquering problems, consciousness on endless effort of training your mind, you will soon or later be defeated by an iron cold realty of life, depressed, disappointed, lose interest and confidence, and quit.  Quit means that you give up your business and close it.  End of trial.


It seems to me the lack of this kind of consciousness of mental strength is the very cause of tragic fact that less than 5% of entrepreneurs succeed in their own business.  It is not your competition who you need to fight against.  It is YOU yourself who you need to fight and win the successful mentality.

If you can acquire your mental strength to be able to fight against any and all problems which you will encounter and maintain such strength, you have more than half the way through.  It is your mental strength which will lead you to be successful in your business, or in anything you hope to be successful, such as life, family relationship, friendship, social relationship.  It is neither knowledge, nor techniques, nor your connections to VIP people which is of essence for your success.

Instead, even if you have all the above listed important-like business factors, if you do not have mental strength, these factors are like a building built on sand beach.  They will fall as you lose your mental strength.  Continuous mental training is the only way to acquire and maintain mental strength.  Mental training is not for the people with weakness or psychological problems.  It is for you and me.



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Nature's Nice Surprises

It has been a year almost since we started to live in this house.  We love this area and we love this home.  The longer we live the more we have some discoveries and started to love more.  Especially, I have not paid any attention to nature before living in Tokyo or even in West Coast whereas we had always lived in Apartment.

I thought, first off, it is a kind of troublesome to give water to plants and flowers almost everyday.  But, becoming warmer and we have had a lot of nice surprises.  We were first surprised at the number of snails in front and back yards.  Since we thought they are harmless, we left them alone.  Soon they started to fill the part of yard at night.  Somebody told my wife that snails will eat leaves of the vegetables and fruits frees she planted.  She started to pick them and through them away to the part nearby.  We noticed that there are spray to get rid of them.  But my wife and I did not feel like killing them, so my wife continued to do all the picks.  I wanted to take a picture of them, but we could not find any big one or the ones so many gathered.  My wife's effort to escape them might have been effective.

We have done some works on our front and back yards.  Planted some fruit trees and took away many weeds.  But, this spring, here comes roses from nowhere and started to open flowers.  Here is a picture.

We planted roses in front yard, but never planted them in our back.  So, these must be left over from our previous residents.  I have heard that roses survivability is very high they stay underground 2-3 years, and when they get water, nutrition, refreshed soil, they started to grow again.  My wife and I now believe that since we eye-witnessed that.

There are other roses growing about 5 feet from the above picture roses.  This was surrounded by Mints.  This is interesting because it looks really like mint opened rose flowers.  The color of roses being same, these must have been previous residents left over, too.  Even the mint we had last year, but we did not expect these mints will grow this much.  It was surprise because there is no trace of roses last year and during winter.  We felt the wonder of nature in our back yard.



This is Blueberry we planted.  After white cute flowers, they started to grow Blueberries finally.  Soon we would be able to enjoy fresh berries.










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Life's Lessons, "Isogaba-Maware" - When hurry, you detour.

When I started working for my previous employer, I used to be overwhelmed by the amount of work I need to process.  There were a lot of paper works, correspondences, telephone calls, meetings, etc, etc...  After a while, I learned that I need to speedily process any work brought to me no matter how the result could be, good or bad, satisfactory or not satisfactory.  In 10 years, I found myself to be pretty good at doing this to the extent that my boss tells me that he likes my speed putting results aside.  I still wonder he tried to praise me or insult me, I do not know.

An age of Personal Computer and Digital Technology has come.  People started to like speed.  There are management people who even teach their subordinates that it is more important to speedily finish their works despite that the output is good, OK, or no good.  My previous employer liked my approach of outputting in speedy way in the shorter time than anybody else.  I myself have thought that being speedy is important factor in business.  It still may be true today.

In reading spiritual books, many blogs, and mail magazines, I started to doubt if being speedy ignoring output result is right approach or not.  I heard some people say that his answer is "No" if you need his answer "Now".  I believe this is good answer.  If so, doing something or thinking something taking some time is important factor in doing business.

There are some Japanese saying that you should take your time thinking and doing when you are in hurry finishing an important work.  "If not hurry to go, you would not have been wet by rain, rain finishes after you ran into the rain." is one of them.  Another one goes "when hurry, you detour".

There were 2 main route to reach to Tokyo from West 500 years ago.  One was shorter using boats to go across a big river.  The other was the way to go across the river by detouring over a bridge. The route over the bridge was about 2 miles longer and people liked to take boats.  But, the history tells that so many people drowned to death by boat accidents or storms.  Instead, there is no people died going over the bridge.

Looking back what I have done, there is almost nothing left from my speedy outputting style work.  Instead, I gained a lot from long slow training of languages and Martial Arts.  Sun Zu the ancient strategist also wrote that if you find your enemy strong, take your time.  Isn't it now the time to think again if the speed is everything.



Please also take a look at my Traffic Solution, which is now a part of my Internet Business Toolbox.
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Emotional IQ - Martial Arts Training Helps