Excelling at karate starts with your outfit. You need to tie the loops of your suit correctly – not easy for a beginner. Terumitsu Taira helps learners out until the snow-white suit no longer slips. We move over to the lawn of the Okinawa Karate Kaikan training and museum complex where Taira set up two cement blocks and laid a layer of roof tiles over the space between them. The tiles are not made of clay, but of hard plastic that can be broken and reassembled. But they are just as hard as clay tiles, he says, before donning gloves and demonstrating his skill. Taira steps in front of the block…