Thanks to Mike Draper who spotted the invitation on the IOGKF home page, if you wish to send birthday greetings to Higaonna Sensei on the occasion of his 70th birthday on 25th December, please send it to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

As we are all hopefully going into the Xmas break and taking some time off from the Dojo, it occurs to me that if you start getting board, fed up with the in-laws, or you are the in-laws(!) how about spending an hour writing some much needed material for the EGKA website. I know you will be pretty desparate to even contemplate the idea ... but the EGKA website is an important tool for disseminating information to the membership, and does win new members .. and I am ever the optimist.

The EGKA's website 'Information' page is gradually filling up with what I hope will be perceived to be useful information (a revised history section, nutrition for athletes, the grading process, EGKA forms, a katakana translation service). But I am sure you can come up with something a little more interesting?

If anyone feels so inclined ... it would also be really useful if we could have a brief written description of each Bunkai for the first five or six katas. It is not so much a detailed description of each application that is needed, but rather a brief prescriptive list of the Bunkai to act as an aide memoir to struggling kyu grades.

I have posted some details of the Southern Pre-grading Training afternoon on the 18th January to the EGKA website (News and Events page) and as I know Sensei Ernie is pretty passionate about the idea of unifying and raising the standard of brown and lower black belts across the country, can the southern Senseis please make sure that the 18th January event is drawn to the attention of your brown and black belt students and encourage them to attend. At this point in time the final training times and attendance fees are still being negotiated, but I will post them to the EGKA website as soon as I can. There are two flyers for the event you can download.

Finally, feedback from the last Grading session earlier this month has resulted in some changes for June 2009. Sensei Ernie and the grading panel felt that although the Resume forms made interesting reading, the information they contained really didn't help the grading process .... so they have been dropped with immediate effect. This will mean the only document that now has to be sent in is the appropriate registration form.

To save Mike's sanity on the book-keeping side, in future it will NOT be necessary to send in any advance payments. All grading fees will be collected on the day.

The variation in the way the grading registration forms were completed by applicants suggested that the two forms needed a little revision. You will find the two new-format registration forms on the EGKA website, and we would ask you to make sure that they are used in the June gradings next year. They ask for no more information than before. They have just been laid out to give more space and clearer instructions about what information and whose signatures are required where. We will trial these versions and change them again if necessary until we iron out all the petty completion problems.  

We hope that the request that Dan-grade applicants assume individual responsibility for completing their name in Katakana will be enforced by you. Using the Katakana translation service (EGKA website) for your own name is an interesting experience, but after the twentieth time it becomes extremely tedious. It is an unfair task to ask any one to undertake. So when you sign any of your student's future grading registration forms to confirm that you agree that they are ready to grade ... please ... make sure they have completed this part of the form themselves. The easiest way is to print the Katakana translation screen, cut and then paste the Katakana symbols onto the EGKA registration form.

About two thirds of the applicants for December's grading came to me, the rest were presented on the day. No one is going to loose any sleep over this unimportant administrative exercise, but if the registration forms are sent to me, we can collate them and prepare useful summaries for the grading panel to use on the day. It also gives the grading panel a better idea of the mix of grades presenting, which means they can also better plan the training sessions before the grading. So please help us to help you.

I was also surprised how many people used Registered Post to deliver the registration forms, presumably to provide assurance of proof of delivery. To provide applicants with the assurance that their forms have been received, and to avoid unnecessary costs, for the June grading we will now post details of the names and grades people have been registered for to the EGKA website as we receive their applications in the post.

The new approach to registering a grading application has already been posted to the 'Events' page on the EGKA website.

All that remains is to wish you all a peaceful and happy Christmas break.

Compliments of the season,

Ralph Elliott-King