Part 2 of an interview we did with Noonan Sensei some time ago. Noonan Sensei is currently the most senior ranked teacher of Chito-Ryu Karate-Do in Australia. In this episode he share his experiences visiting Japan for the first time as a young man.—- Transcript —-Sandra: Hi there again. Today it's time to continue on with part two of the five-part interview with Noonan Sensei.Martin: And if you haven't already heard the first part, be sure to go back and listen to the previous episode.Sandra: Yeah, do that. It's great. And in this episode, Noonan Sensei will be sharing what it was like going to Japan to train for the very first time as a young man.Martin: We've noticed everybody faces challenges in life, some big and some small, but not everyone has a way to navigate these problems.Sandra: It's not always easy, but we found that we always keep coming back to what we've learned from our years in the dojo.Martin: And that's what this podcast is all about.Sandra: Helping us all find the solutions to life's problems, or even better yet, to remove the problems before they arise.Martin: This is Martin and Sandra Phillips, and welcome to the Karate4Life Podcast.Sandra: So I guess for you, I'm sure there were some really tough days in the dojo growing up, going from white belt to black belt. So has there been any times when you wanted to quit karate? So you've been training for a number of years?Noonan Sensei: Yeah, yeah. Not that I quit. One, I mean, I still remember it to this day.Steve Davison had hands like mallets, like little steel mallets. They were, it was like they were heavy. So he'd make a fist and his fist looked like a mallet.And I remember one day we were training and he did something and he hit me in the kidneys twice. Very fast, very sharp. There was no malice in it or anything like that, but it was just so, I don't know whether it was the pain of it or if it just had an emotional effect on my body.Because I know now, which I didn't know then, that sometimes if your organs experience some type of like penetrative hit, you know, and they get shaken up, sometimes they can cause an emotional reaction. I've seen that happen to people. But, so I don't know what it was, but tears just came to my eyes.And I've never, I don't think I've ever tried in the dojo. I don't think so anyway. But that day, I don't know how old I would have been, maybe 16, 17 or something like that.I couldn't, I just couldn't stop. And it was, you know, it was very embarrassing because you can do that. And get on with it.So, but I never felt like quitting at all. Yeah, yeah. Sometimes you stay, I feel like quitting, but you don't really feel like quitting.I think we all experienced that. We all know what that feels like. When I first went to Japan, you know, I had a big head and I felt I was a big shot.And I trained really hard here. And I did lots and lots, lots and lots, but I did all the tournaments that we used to do, that we could do, because there wasn't a lot of them. And I'd be the only guy in the dojo to enter.I'd just go by myself, because nobody else would be there. And ultimately, Steve Davis and Steve Sensei would turn up and just be there as a support for me. Or a couple of my buddies in the dojo would turn up, but they wouldn't fight.You see, they wouldn't enter. They'd just turn up to, I don't know, be my fan club or something. But anyway, so I felt pretty good about myself.And I went to Japan, and then it might have been the first morning training or whatever it was, it was very early on that I just realised that I'm way, way, way, way, way off the mark here. And no disrespect to my teachers whatsoever, as I've just explained to you, but technically, it was a different world. And I felt I just didn't understand any of this.And that was very, that was heartbreaking. I wouldn't say I was back in my room crying or anything, but I was pretty d