Getting started - welcome!

Its been a long held dream of mine to move to Okinawa, the birthplace of karate (and my wife), to live a life more balanced between family, training and work (and roughly in that order of priority). Finally, after 10 years together in the UK, we decided to make the move and came out to Okinawa to live permanently at the end of August 09'. Having been very fortunate to have a fantastic place to live with a potential space for an attached home dojo I have decided to get stuck in and build it as soon as possible. A dojo is more than just a training space as many martial artists will know very well. Nagamine Shoshin, the founder of Matsubayashi-ryu karate in Okinawa wrote - 'The dojo is the place where courage is fostered and superior human nature is bred through the ecstasy of sweating in hard work. It is the sacred place where the human spirit is polished.' I like that. But the first challenge is building the dojo, which I will document over the next few weeks. I want to build a training hall that both fits purpose and a basic simple esthetic. A space that can evolve and be modified as the training needs evolve. And I've never attempted a build project on this scale before. So its going to be fun!!!