Recently, I undertook a trip to Japan. My plan was to train karate-do at the top "dojo" (training halls) and obtain some advanced coaching. This was to be my sixth visit; I have come to really enjoy the experience of visiting Tokyo. I hope I can explain why as I relate my experience here.

It's Thursday evening, 6pm . I am in an office on the 7th floor of a slightly tired looking building located in the business district of Nishi-Shimbashi. I am there to meet up with Shimura-san and Kato-san, the full time administration officers of the JKF Wadokai karate federation. Only a few hours earlier, I stepped off my plane at Tokyo's Narita airport and made my way to my hotel in Ikebukuro district of Tokyo. So, no decent sleep since Tuesday night and my body has spent 14 hours coiled up in economy class. Nice preparation for karate training!

Kato-san speaks some English and, thanks to my recent efforts at night class, I at least have a rudimentary grasp of Nihongo, enough for proper greetings at least. But we've not long, Shimura and I are to head over to Shibuya for karate training but not before Kato suggests that I come with him on Friday evening to train with his instructor. I should mention, that Shimura and Kato are both 7th Dan sensei (teachers) themselves' but they still train in their dojo with their instructors (Arakawa sensei 9th Dan and Takagi Sensei 8th Dan).

Shimura and I take the sub-way conversing as we travel in broken English and Japanese. Somehow, we seem to understand one another. We arrive at Shibuya into a swirl of people, the platform is packed. The crowd carry me one direction so Shimura holds his hand up high so I can try and snake my way through the throng against the flow. Out of the station and we walk the half mile or so to the well kept urban school which Arakawa Sensei uses as his Thursday evening dojo.

The contrast is striking, the bright lights and hustle of Shibuya station fall away as we walk up and down a couple of steep hills and begin to see more typical, quiet Tokyo urban life. Small yakitori bars, 7 / 11 shops, secure gated apartment blocks, small houses, little parks etc and then we arrive at the entrance to the school, a low rise nondescript building. We go through and enter the sports hall and remove our shoes in the outer hall. Inside, the darkened building is lit up by a slightly yellow light which give the dojo a distinct colour image in my mind as I recall it writing this now.

Already there are people warming up and in the far corner, sits Arakawa Sensei, his legs crossed and one knee pulled to his chest in a kind of yoga position. He watches all of the goings-on impassively as we and others arrive and quickly change.

I am sweating already. Tokyo in July is hot and humid and not the ideal place for a fair skinned northern Brit. If putting on my dogi (training suit) has my brow moistening, what will training be like? I soon find out.

We all gather in a circle and begin a warm up led by another senior student, he is probably about 60 himself (I should mention that Arakawa Sensei is 78 years old). There are perhaps 20 of us training this night and the pattern of warm up is familiar. Each exercise is done with a slight soft bounce with the leader calling out "ich-ni-san-shi" and the rest of us respond "go-ro-shichi-hachi". Nothing unusual in the warm up, just everyday stretches but covering the whole body. Softness in the body is very important for training and is acquired through regular training.

After the warm up we do some standing basic techniques. This is where I go into eagle-eye mode; I am here for this stuff so I want to pick up the subtlety of what is being taught. The emphasis today is on keeping elbows close to your body and staying relaxed in the movement. Sounds simple, but trust me, it's not so easy.

Next we line up, and then kneel on the floor in "seiza" position, knees close together. We bow to the front, then bow to Arakawa Sensei, adjusting our position to face him as we do, finally returning to facing forwards, we bow to the rest of our class mates. This is our commitment to train hard and to thank the instructor for teaching us. This routine is practised the world over, wherever karate is trained.

As we perform these bows we are arranged in a certain way; the seniors Shimura, Katsube, Okumachi , are at one end and at the other are the few beginners. I stand just along from the beginners. I am a visitor to this dojo so that is the place to go regardless how many years training I have under my belt.

One of the seniors I mentioned that is lined up is Okumachi-san. He is a former World Champion, winner of the 1994 Wadokai World Championships. His techniques are pure textbook. He has visited these shores for a seminar once before - 2004 I think it was - and his performance is recalled with an element of awe by those of us who were there.

That a world champion is training in this dojo under the eye of Arakawa sensei should tell you something about the quality of the training here. Last time I came, Maeda Sensei, Japan's National Team Coach and former World Champion in kumite (sparring) was also training, getting advice in preparation for a grading test he was taking.

Arakawa Sensei has produced several World Champions, apart from those I have mentioned, Murase, Nishimura and Hayashi all made a name for themselves in the 1980's. Arakawa is much sought after for his coaching. He has travelled extensively - someone told me something like 70 countries since 1964. These days, he is rather mild in his teaching, he watches then shakes his head softly and says "your technique different", by which he means modify your movement as I am about to show you. He has a knack for spotting the fundamental error be it body alignment, over rotation, turning too soon, turning too late. You feel like a complete beginner in his presence. But his teaching is completely rational, he adjusts your posture and then proves its efficacy to you, he is not interested in making flashy or photogenic posture, he wants to teach you how to use your body weight properly, there is no need to use strength. Thats a hard concept to grasp and I think that even now, it marks the difference between Japanese karate and what I see practised in the UK.

We work through basic technique and kata (forms) and soon two hours pass by. I am soaked in sweat, literally as if I have stepped into a sauna. Unfortunately, there are no showers so I have to do my best with a hand towel and pull on dry clothes over sweating skin. My dogi is saturated. Gasping for water, I manage a mouthful from the fountain as we are ushered out of the building, the caretaker keen to lock up.

We all hurry to the gate, where everyone from class is waiting. Once everyone is gathered, there is a collective bow and "arigato gozaimasu" before everyone sets off down the hill together to head home.

For me however, it is into a small basement bar with Shimura sensei and Katsube sensei. We have been doing this now for as many visits as I can remember and it's a treat to be taken along to a place no tourist book of Tokyo will show you.

We enter the restaurant and are ushered to a low table around which are arranged cushions. As we sit down we are given steaming cloths quickly followed by glass tankards filled with Asahi beer. The glasses are chilled and the beer has a generous frothy head to it. We three sink these down in almost one gulp and Shimura sensei calls for refills. Food is ordered: fresh peas in their pods, small bowls of noodles, salad, fresh vegetables, tiny fried prawns (eaten Japanese style, just crunch the little fellows in your mouth, no need to remove the shells) and many other delicious things. The food all seems healthy and the beer is refreshingly cold. Katsube sensei orders Shouchu, a traditional alcoholic drink, made from potato, it is drunk with ice and water. We keep topping up one another's drink so we've soon polished off a bottle between us. So much for all that healthy food and karate training, our alcohol intake would have your local GP raising an eyebrow! I tell myself there was a lot of water drunk with the shouchu so it can't be that bad!

Next day, there is no hangover thankfully. I head down to a local western style coffee bar for breakfast. I choose something that looks quite filling - rice, fried egg, potato salad, burger in a gravy sauce. It sounds an odd combination but I must say I really enjoyed it. All this is washed down with coffee. You can usually find good coffee in Japan and there are coffee shops all over the place. Starbucks have landed there but the Japanese have not been slow to recognise the opportunity themselves and have many of their own chains. I do my best to minimise the income of the better known Seattle chain and spend my Yen in these instead.

Today, I am meeting Kato-san who will take me to the dojo of his instructor, Takagi-sensei. I meet him at 7pm at the appropriately named Otsuka station (Hironori Otsuka was the person who originated the Wadokai group and is the founder of the style of karate we train). We walk together through a myriad of residential back streets, picking up bottles of Pocari Sweat (unfortunately named sports drink with magical thirst quenching ingredients) en-route. As we approach the school, we meet other students from the karate club - Watanabe-san and Sonoda-san and they show a keen interest in where I am from and how long I will be training there for.

Training in Takagi Sensei's dojo has a different atmosphere to Arakawa-sensei's dojo. There are a few children here for a start and for the first 20 minutes or so, they race around the hall alternating between football and basketball, delighting in kicking the ball as hard as they can at Takagi Sensei's son Hidemasa. Don't worry though, this isn't some bullying or strange karate ritual, Hidemasa is about 20 years old and is himself a highly accomplished karate-ka already. I am told he is a world champion (as incidently, is another young woman training in this dojo) but like Okumachi and Maeda at Arakawa sensei's dojo, they just train normally in the lines with everyone else.

At 7.30pm training starts with Watanabe-san leading the warm up. The familiar "1-2-3-4" call is responded to by us all "5-6-7-8" as we work our way through quite an extensive range of stretches. Not everyone is so flexible though but the point is you prepare yourself for the training ahead.

In this class I learn a new routine or two. We are practising punching fast and they are almost doing so without actually punching properly (arm punching rather than using the body) just developing fast hand technique. I am not sure why but it's impossible to keep up with the pace the techniques are counted at. We then switch to punching across at a 45 degree angle switch your body through 90 degree turn each time, rotating about your centreline. The young woman next to me, I mentioned her earlier as a World Champion, well she achieves these turns with amazing speed. I feel slightly deflated and a little awe-struck, not least because I have a good 20 years on her and doubt I'll ever do this as well as she is doing!

Next we are walking up and down the dojo, every second step performing a kick. This is interesting, just walking naturally and kicking - no preparatory stance, just kick and walk. It gets the heart pumping too so I make a mental note to include this back in England. Part way into this routine a butterfly comes into the hall and mesmerizes the children; it settles on the wall at the far end of the hall and as we approach that side of the room walking and kicking, their kicks sort of trail off from the exercise as they gaze open mouthed at a butterfly which must have the wingspan of a dvd (I kid you not, they grow them big in Japan). Watanabe-san just continues calling the movements "ich-ni-san.." and eventually they rejoin the training.

The class join together for formal bows, this time it's done standing rather than kneeling and we all wait as one of the children recites the dojo kun (code) at the top of his voice. Before we go further me and another (Japanese) visitor are brought to the front of the class and we are asked to introduce ourselves. I try my best in Japanese and Kato sensei jumps in as I fumble for some words. They whole class politely applaud. It?s a surprise I wasn?t expecting and it strikes me even now what a warm and welcoming gesture that was.

The rest of the class time is spent working on basics and kata. Takagi sensei assigns Kato-sensei "your instructor tonight" and we work through basics and kata training. Occasionally Takagi-sensei floats across to add to the already bewildering check points Kato has pointed out to me. The heat is so much that sweat pours from me and Takagi sensei nearly comes a cropper on a pool that has run off my legs and feet. "Enjoy your karate" he tells me with a grin as he calls an end to tonights' training.

After training a group of us retire to a local hostelry for welcome beer, salad, yakitori and shouchou. Luckily there are a few English speakers in the group so I am able to chat more easily to everyone and it is interesting to learn more about the people I have been training with tonight.

This time we are seated on western chairs but that's not enough to prevent me having a cramp attack on my hamstrings, I have to stand and hop about the place clutching the back of my leg, I can feel the muscle contracting into a lump the size of a fillet steak. It seems to draw a mixture of wry amusement and sympathy from the other people in the place, but my agony is rewarded with another glass filled with frothing cold beer. It seems to do the trick.

The following Monday I take the train to Morioka to train with the renowned Hakoishi Sensei..

IN PART 2

Training in Morioka with Hakoishi Sensei and grading and training in Ikebukuro Budojo, Tokyo.