While some schools celebrated St. Patrick's Day, Bob Smith's school celebrated green leaf day.

This was the day when anyone not holding a leaf could be punched.

There was also open chest day with similar violent festivities.

It was no wonder Mr. Smith turned to martial arts.

"I have been doing martial arts since 1967," he said. "I was very little when I started."

He was born in Bermuda, but moved to New York with his parents when he was just five years old.

"The neighbourhood wasn't very good and there were lots of gangs and racial violence," he said.

The neighbourhood was Elmhurst, Queens, New York, the same neighbourhood that raised civil rights leader Malcolm X.

"Martial Arts was a passion of mine since the first time I read my first martial arts magazine," said Mr. Smith.

Today, Mr. Smith runs the Academy of Martial Arts on King Street in Hamilton.

His discipline is Goju-Ryu karate.

"Goju means 'hard and soft'. Ryu means school," said Mr. Smith. "It is a good blend."

He is still fighting bullies, in a way, by offering self-defence classes to women and seniors. A new class starts up this week and is almost fully booked.

His youngest students are just three to six years old, about the same age he was when he had to outrun the neighbourhood bullies.

"These classes are very popular," he said. "I have classes back to back on Saturdays. And it is standing room only because the parents stay to watch."

The classes for the littlest ones don't involve fighting other children, but instead work to develop basic skills like self-discipline and memory, physical fitness, punching and kicking, among other things.

He previously had a school on Joells Alley, but it burned down.

"I lost all my books," he said. "I had a wonderful library. I had many books that were signed. That was very hard. I am trying to rebuild that now."

He recently took four of his students, Nichole Burch, Matthew Welch and Mr. Welch's children Rebecca and Oliver to the birthplace of karate, Okinawa, Japan.

In July they took part in the Fifth World Martial Arts Festival in Japan.

The festival is held to honour the anniversary of the founder of Goju-Ryu, Sensei Chojun Miyagi's birth. It was attended by 53 countries and 850 students.

The event included a seminar taught by world renowned instructors.

All training took place in the Okinawa Budokan, a state of the art facility built by the Okianawan government for martial arts.

"Okinawa was beautiful," Mr. Smith said. "It has similar weather to Bermuda, although it is actually a bit hotter."

Okinawa is about a two and a half hour flight from Tokyo, Japan, and is a popular tourism destination.

"I saw a lot of Japanese there with their cameras," he said. "They were on vacation also."

The festival is held every four years.

"This was the biggest one yet," said Mr. Smith. "Karate is becoming a real attraction in Okinawa. Everywhere we went we were bumping into people who were members of this federation."

While in Okinawa, Nichole Burch, who is an assistant instructor under Mr. Smith, received her third degree black belt.

"There are 10 degrees, but 10 would be my instructor," Mr. Smith explained. "You would have practised for most of your life to get to a 10 degree black belt."

"It was awesome," said Ms Burch. "It was my second time in Okinawa and I still felt like it was the first time. I was overwhelmed by the amount of people and the type of vibe. Everyone is there training. There is an amazing amount of energy in the room."

To earn her third degree black belt she basically had to show everything she knew.

"They really put you through your paces," said Ms Burch. "It is a test of endurance. It is really tiring. It was a two and a half hour exam. There were 70 of us grading for different levels of black belt."

After the long test, there was a further test.

"At the very end they want to see what your spirit is like," she said. "You do push ups, crunches, squats. They say you are going too slow. They want: fast, fast, fast. This is after that long exam."

Mr. Smith said there were other people in Bermuda trained to that level, but not so much in his discipline of martial arts.

Ms Burch has been studying martial arts for 16 years.

"I have always loved martial arts from a child," she said. "I grew up in the Bruce Lee era. That was where I first became interested.

"There weren't many girls when I started. I started as a teenager, but I stopped and then went back after college."

When she first started to compete she had to fight the boys because there weren't other girls to compete with.

"Now there are always girls," she said.