fight

A couple of days ago, when I was writing the address of my dojo's website onto the pavement with chalk (with the aim of drawing attention to martial arts, especially to aikido), a little kid was coming by with his mother. As he saw what I was doing he asked his mother what I was writing there. After having received the answer from her, he immediately asked her mother "What is aikido?" I was curious about what people not doing martial arts might know about aikido so I waited patiently until the woman said something.

There is a film by director Akira Kurosawa that is very interesting to watch: Rashomon (1950).  There were two main things I noticed when watching it:

You may ask why I am writing about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in an aikido blog. The answer is twofold. 1. I can relate almost anything to aikido and its philosophy; 2. This particular problem is more related to aikido than you might think.

There is a joke saying "The rabbit has a real personality, he sits among weed all day and still he doesn't smoke it". It would be a bit harsh if I said this joke alone made me thinking about martial arts, but it has something to do with it. It is said a great martial artist doesn't use his powers although he could kill others easily.