Early Life
Collins was born in 1949 in Mountain Ash, Wales, around 20 miles from Cardiff. His father died when he was eight years old. As a schoolboy, Collins played rugby and trained in athletics. He began training in Kyokushin karate at the age of 15, at the Cardiff School of Budo. It was around this time that he first read about Masutatsu Oyama and decided that he would eventually travel to Japan to train.
In 1967, Collins decided to join the London Metropolitan Police—but only three weeks after he had set off on this endeavour, his mother died. He worked in London for two years before joining the merchant navy, with the aim of working his way to Japan. Collins was 21 when he eventually left for Japan.
Read more about this topic: Howard Collins
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“It is not too much to say that next after the passion to learn there is no quality so indispensable to the successful prosecution of science as imagination. Find me a people whose early medicine is not mixed up with magic and incantations, and I will find you a people devoid of all scientific ability.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)
“Look at your [English] ladies of quality—are they not forever parting with their husbands—forfeiting their reputations—and is their life aught but dissipation? In common genteel life, indeed, you may now and then meet with very fine girls—who have politeness, sense and conversation—but these are few—and then look at your trademen’s daughters—what are they?—poor creatures indeed! all pertness, imitation and folly.”
—Frances Burney (1752–1840)