If it were Carsightings, he'd have suddenly aged five years
And I haven't seen him since.
Un-Dee: actually the only Shuri-Ryu dojos that require black gis are the ones that are under my Sensei, Wendi Dragonfire. There's a great article and some info on her here:
http://www.fightingarts.com/reading/article.php?id=6
It's an older article, she was promoted to 8th (yes, 8th) dan last year
She made her students wear black gis as a statement against racism within and outside of the martial arts world. I've seen some other karate styles wear black gis, but not often, and for official events I'd have to wear white myself. Personally I think black looks much more impressive or even intimidating, and just more beautiful, but that's just me.
About Shuri, see the American website:
http://www.shuri-ryu.com/shuriryu.htm
My Sensei is also one of Grandmaster Trias' direct students and a co-student of Hanshi Robert Bowles, who maintains the site mentioned above. My sensei came to the Netherlands in 1982 to spread the style in Europe. We have 5 dojos now: in Nijmegen (main dojo, where I train), Leiden, Utrecht and Amsterdam, and a dojo in Berlin, Germany.
Shuri is a soft contact style. The Shuri the Dragonfire dojos practice is different from the American branch in that certain exercises have been replaced with others that are less competition-focused, a lot of things the Americans do, we do not (mostly power training) because we want our dojos to be accessible for everyone, regardless of their physical condition (we have a 3rd dan in a wheelchair and a 2nd dan who is spastic, both women BTW), most dojos are for women only (except the Nijmegen one, and We're trying to get some of the others, or at least some communal events mixed as well) and most importantly, we've abandoned competition karate. When I just started some of the women were competing, but that was only in the International Gay Games (my Sensei is a lesbian, I am not so I couldn't compete anyway), and then decided "It's not fair to only compete in the Gay Games, and since so many women here cant or won't compete in other competitions, let's stop competing altogether." We still practice sparring, but just for the heck of it. The style is totally focused on selfdefence/surviving on the streets and uses many locks, chokes, throws, pressurepoints, close-in fighting techniques (elbows&knees instead of punches and kicks) gauging, clawing and other mean tricks.
Not to offend anyone doing competition karate, but my Sensei told me the following once and I always use it to explain to students what I think the difference is between sports karate and 'selfdefence' karate (martial sport versus martial art): When you take karate and eliminate any technique and any spot on the body that can really injure, incapacitate or even kill someone, what you are left with is competition karate. Yes, I know, hitting the head or groin can cause some serious damage, but at least in our system, competition targets are limited to the temples, chest, ribcage and groin and head&groin should be protected. Free sparring also throws in the outsides of the thighs.
Any other questions?
EDIT:
somebody somewhere else on this forum wrote:
(you're a) kick-ass karate chick!
I still want that one as my user title