Judo, poetry and friendship
While cleaning out my closet in preparation to move, I came across an old poem a friend of mine wrote. Before sharing the poem, I will provide some context. I first met my friend, Joe Kronen, when I started Judo at The University of Connecticut in 1988. We essentially started and shared our judo journey together. We both trained for several years at UCONN judo and both earned our black belts. Joe then moved to Japan for work. A year later I too moved to Japan to teach English and continue studying judo. It was about this time we started to notice differences in our respective approach to life in Japan, judo and life in general. Joe was not a natural at judo. Learning new technique was difficult for him and required a lot of practice. Joe made up for this with hard work, determination and a no-quit attitude. Though [...]
