hey everybody!
I'm planning on traveling to Japan for 2 months during January and February (yes I know it's gonna be cold)...
I've been training in bujinkan for 12 years or so and obviously I plan on training in Japan.
But I also what to train in other arts, and I wanted to know if any of you guys can recommend teachers of koryu in Japan that would accept students for a short period of time?
Willing to try anything so any recommendations are good
Thanks!
Hi Dean,
I was going to answer this via your PM, but might as well answer it here instead.
No, I'm not aware of any Koryu dojo that would be open to such a thing. You have to realise that a Koryu tends to be rather particular about who is trained in their methods… it's really more of a family than anything else… what you're suggesting is almost akin to saying you're going on a holiday to Japan with your wife, but want to date around with a number of other girls in Japan while you're there… and expect not only your wife (your current school and teacher) to be okay with it, but for each of the families of the other girls to be fine with being trialled for a short time, then handed back. In other words, it's just not done. Koryu, more than any other arts, really require dedication.
Now, that's not to say that you can't get some exposure to them without being a member… there may be some embu while you're in Japan that you can attend (especially if you're going to be there for a few months)… some schools occasionally have public seminars that are open to the public… but to come along to a regular class and expect to be a part of their training (interrupting the training of those already dedicated to the school) isn't the way things are done.
The next thing to be aware of is that Koryu are rather personal endeavours… you don't go do Koryu just because you're interested in the general idea of Koryu… you join a particular Ryu-ha because you can be of benefit to that Ryu-ha. There's no way to recommend a Ryu-ha to anyone… to do so would be to vouch for the person, and to recommend them to the Ryu, not the other way around… and, honestly, we're not about to do such a thing.
I understand that, in this day and age of cross-training, and people thinking that random collections of individual techniques cobbled together being what actually works, this approach is rather unusual… but it's how these arts survive. They require dedication to the Ryu themselves, not opening themselves up to having outside methods corrupting what they teach. In a very real way, a Ryu is the art itself… if you only do a part of it, it's not the Ryu… if you try to combine aspects of one with another, it's then nothing at all. None of this is what any of the Ryu want… so they'll be rather reticent to go along with your plans.
Hyoho, to be frank, I'd highly doubt that such concepts are ones that Dean has come across (in his Bujinkan training or elsewhere). Despite it's foundations in some of Japans classical arts, it really is not something I'd ever describe as "traditional Japanese martial arts"… it's quite modern, really, just with traditional trappings, so to speak, and is highly Westernised… particularly when taught in the West. And while that's great for those who are after that, it does often leave an rather incorrect impression that the students are doing something close to classical Japanese arts, when the reality is quite different.
