Moving Day (Picture Heavy)

I mentioned once that sensei was talking about moving the dojo into a larger building. He had decided that we just couldn't do it at this time. He had been scheduled to do a women's self defense seminar up in Memphis, and he was going to use the proceeds from that seminar to pay the lease and stuff to get the new building. Unfortunately, the seminar was postponed, so he was unable to get the building at that time.

Enter the State Department of Health. Some of the local day care centers had turned sensei in, trying to say that he was running a day care, instead of a karate dojo with after school classes. The DOH said that he would have to install an additional restroom, plus an additional exit, and have covers on the lights or they would shut his dojo down. Sensei only leases the building, and he was sure the landlady wouldn't want to do all that, so he had to move fast. He borrowed money from his parents and leased the new building. He has spent most of this week moving stuff in.

The building used to be a church, and there is a lot of work that will need to be done to it to make it what he envisions, but that will have to be done later on down the road. I went out there last night to see the place, and this is what I found.


This is the main room. This room by itself is much larger than our old dojo. Notice the ceiling fans. Sensei will really have to work us hard to break a sweat in here.


This is the same room, but the other end. Sensei is going to take the top two steps of that stage out and put a boxing ring up there. The rest of the space will be for workouts. Sensei thinks we can get 30 students in here easily. The acoustics in this room are fantastic. I told sensei that if 30 adults kiaied in here, we might break out the windows. No, Cody is not abusing that child. They were playing tag.

This is the other big room. It is pretty well unfinished.

Here it is from the other end. There are several rooms in this part of the building. We will have our very own weight room:


One of sensei's private students is a doctor from Memphis. He is donating a Bowflex machine to the dojo. That will be in there as well. We can go early and get a workout before class.

This will be sensei's office:

And this is the kitchen:

It doesn't have a stove or refrigerator in it. I don't know if sensei will add one later, or not.

Judging by the looks of things, I think this big room was the nursery, when the building was a church. I don't know what sensei has planned for this, but I thought it would be a good waiting area for the parents. He could (at a later date) cut holes in the walls and add one way mirrors, so the parents could see the class, but the kids wouldn't be distracted by the parents watching them.

This is the same room from the other end:

I have my own bathroom. The door says LADIES, and since I'm the only one, sensei said this one is all mine. I said, "Good! No more pee on the seat!"

Here is the men's bathroom.
Sensei wants to eventually add a shower area, also. I'm thinking he was wanting to do that in one of the upstairs rooms, right above the two bathrooms.

Upstairs? Yes, there is an upstairs:

Ok, if it were me, I'd replace this carpet, too. There are 5 additional rooms upstairs, which were most likely Sunday School rooms. Sensei is going to make one of them his own room, and one will be designated for private lessons. Most of the rooms are unfinished, and even the ones that are, aren't done very well. Finishing them will come later on down the road. Right now the important thing was to get into the building.

Sensei has a lot of plans for the new building. In addition to karate, he wants to have a boxing club. Another lady will be teaching cheerleading and gymnastics, plus, people have asked about tai chi, pilates, and tae bo classes. And he is taking seriously my suggestion to have a women/girls class.

Sensei said we almost didn't make it. He told me that no sooner had he signed the lease and gotten the keys, the building's owner had just driven off and someone else showed up wanting to lease the building. He asked sensei if he would be willing to rent it, but he said no.

Sensei is in the red shirt, and the other two guys are Brian (in the tank top) and Tim, two new white belts. They had brought their trucks to help sensei get some of the bigger stuff moved.

I was upstairs when I took this picture. There was a storm just beginning to move into the area. When my camera flash went off, Tim ducked and Brian hollered. They thought it was lightning. Tim laughed, and Brian said, "We'd thought the lightning done got us!"

Before we left for the night, I went back into the main room, slipped my shoes off and did sunsu kata--the only real Isshinryu kata.

It was appropriate.