Personally, I despise "Americanized Tae Kwon Do" and Shuto Kan karate.
Why? You may ask.
For Tae Kwon Do, if you were to look at the "Amaercanized" and traditional types side by side, they would be EXTREMELY different.
For Shuto Kan, lets see............They don't teach "useful nowadays" stuff, such as how to apply Bunkai(Parts of Kata practised with a partner) to protect yourself in the year 2009(or at least they didn't when I went to Shuto Kan). They advance through belts too quikly(an example of this is when my dad saw somebody who started at the karate school that I went to right before I left there, a couple 2-3 years later, he saw the same guy at a tournament as a black belt)
But, enough of my complaining, personally, I go to Goju-Ryu Karate. Both my dad and I love doing it, and it is literally spread out all over Washington State(where I used to live), but it is still a small style.
P.S. Sorry for ranting like that, I was just saying my personal opinion, I am truly sorry if I offended anybody here
Late save there. =P As a person doing Shoto-Kan karate though...well, karate certainly does differ noticeably from style to style in general, but don't forget it can differ from club to club as well - in my one Bunkai can be seen (although admittedly my dad and I (and a few more) probably look into it more than many others). I find the history and application of karate to be quite interesting, actually, and its good to see what the moves behind karate can actually mean. Also, belt systems definitely vary from club to club. =) (BTW, i'm doing karate in Australia; apparently our club is set up different to some clubs in America, according to a sensei here who went there for a bit. But meh.)
IIRC... Goju-Ryu is a more physically-focused style, right? More on the self defence and conditioning and so on... correct me if I'm wrong though. Where I live my karate school (Shoto-Kan style) is the main one around and simply the one we choose and stayed with for some years now. When I began karate though before we moved, I did 2 years of the Goshin Ryu style. And then I went back to white belt upon changing schools. XD
I'd agree that people grading may occur too fast... of course though, some people get there faster than others. Guess it depends really if the club gives the belt to someone who is good enough to achieve a Black Belt, I suppose. Took me when I started with my new club 5 years to reach Shodan Ho. But karate isn't just all on the fitness aspect, certainly. There are many other benefits, and things to consider as well on grading. Hurrah for that!
On that subject, currently we have a set of 'black belt candidates' - people who are going for their black belt soon. This happens every half a year here - what happens is that we have an initial test - if they pass that, they then go on a 'prep cycle' for 1-2 months - basically getting them ready. During and at the end of that, they have a final pre-test, and then shortly after that they have their black belt test. The first part is to basically limit it to people who we feel are ready to go for their black belt, although it doesn't that they
will pass. All of the black belts in our club have our say on each person and whether they should go or not, based their attitude, technique, fitness, etc, etc during that period of time.
The test itself is basically a full weekend of karate - testing them on anything and everything, really. I did it last time for by 3rd Dan... on the first day we did karate on and off (along with fitness tests and so forth) from 1 pm Friday to 3am Saturday morning. Man, that was tiring stuff...worth it though. =D
I know however places during which the black belt test takes about 5 minutes in total - and I suppose this works just as well - as someone to do a simple kata, for instance, and you would probably tell how good they are at karate.
Might be a topic, actually - how is the black belt testing done in your club, whatever martial art you do?
