Mr Miyagi... RIP

Tragic news, the brilliant Pat Morita has passed away...




Best known for his role as Mr Miyagi, the mysterious, karate expert caretaker in the Karate Kid movies.

Ah... you know when a movie comes along and you feel like 'this movie was made for me!'... well I've only experienced that a few times, and The Karate Kid was one such movie. I loved it, loved it. loved it and I have gone back and watched it and apart from the nostalgia, I do realise it was pretty poor, but for the time it was amazing... and also pretty harmless.

Your classic tale of the little guy standing up to the bullies, of friendship and crossing cultural bounderies... genius. And back in those days mothers didn't care if they heard little Danny saying things like 'mom... I'm just going to spend some time with the creepy little Japaenese guy in the basement... he's teaching me 'special' techniques'.

You would not believe how hard I searched for my own miyagi! I found a creepy guy down at the 'Old Friend' take-away... who was actually Chinese, but close enough, and I even tried the old 'pen pal' route... writing to and then dropping these poor japanese girls who really wanted an english pen pal, but were ignored because they said 'no I no know karate... but my brother is yellow belt'... 'What about your father? Isn't he a master?' I wrote back... 'no... he mechanic'. FUCK!




Wax on, wax off and who could forget the 'honk' incident above... we all knew miyagi could chop the Cobra Kais' heads off... but he didn't need to... well, that and it was a PG.

Daniel-San, the fuck'tard comes good, using the secret Crane Technique... it baffles your opponent, and whilst he wonders why you have gone all 'gay'... you kick him in the head... I'm telling you, fuckin Ninjas couldn't even come up with something so genius... except for smoke bombs, they rock.

And another fascinating thing about the Karate Kid franchise, is that it belongs to the exclusive club of movies where the sequel is actually pretty cool.

I was 'in the pants' happy when I heard Daniel-San was going to go to Okinawa with Miyagi in the sequel and would have to fight to the death with Chozen, Miyagi's nemesis' pupil... plus Daniel-San got it on with a local girl... holy shit, I dug out those old pen pal letters, 'listen, I know you and your family do not know karate... but I think I am in love with you.'

I wanted to 'do' bamboo, just like Daniel-San.

And man did I nearly shit when Chozen blocked the crane kick!

Noriyuki 'Pat' Morita... we at CaC, salute you!!!

Pat has a staggering 103 movie credits.