Our dojo name origin or what “Tsunami” really means?

When they hear the word Tsunami, many think of the destruction and violence, but our dojo name has nothing to do with it. The truth is very poetic …

Back then when I was 9 years old, I began practicing karate, my mothers friend recommended one karate coach who held the club at Tashmajdan, Belgrade. A couple of days later she took me to the first training and we met him – his name was Mare. I remember that my young brain first thought that it was typical woman’s name, and I had not heard until then that it could be a male name. So then I tried to think harder and thing what it means and on the first I thought that it might be from the Italian “mare” like the sea?!

Nothing of this was of course true, a man name was Dusan Marinkovic and of course his nickname was Mare. Since I met him up until the age of 20 he had a decisive influence on the formation of my personality and character. I can freely say that he was a substitute for a my father who was not there. A true mentor and prsonality model for life.

Twenty years later, from that boyhood thought that Mare was actually the sea, I got the idea to call the club “Tsunami” because the tsunami is a wave and wave comes from the sea. It somehow poeticly described the relationship between me and my sensei from whom I learned the first steps in karate, but who also prepared me for the great steps in my life. In that sea there was an earthquake that changed me and caused this little Tsunami.

That’s how we got the name of the dojo…

sensei Dušan Marinković