"So. . . Do you, like, do karate? Or what?"
I used to be punched with such questions often, always while vacationing in the States and always when trapped in conversation with people whose knowledge of Japan roughly equated their knowledge of the moon.
But these days the questions never come. I am no longer of the karate-kicking age, I suppose. People look at my stomach and think "inflation" rather than "sports." With Japan, the topic tends to be one or the other: martial arts or the economy.
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