Good-mouthing

[Bradenn]

In a thread called "Absolutely astounding ninja !!!!!!!!" someone complained that they watched a Bujinkan class which was not good in their opinion and did not teach realistically.

Several people responded that there ARE indeed good Bujinkan schools and teachers out there. I have seen this point made in several places and I agree with it myself. The trick is how to find them, especially as we agree that rank is not necessarily a good indicator.

I suggest that there is a thread in which these good instructors and their dojos be recommended. Rather than bad-mouth or shaming the bad ones, this would ignore them and focus on the good ones. Hopefully this will aid new students in finding a good teacher and will eventually reduce the number of "Absolutely astounding ninja !!!!!!!!" posts and may even improve people's perception of Taijutsu/Ninjutsu.

I'd like to see the unknown (but still excellent) teachers be identified because not everyone can train with the Peter Kings, Brin Morgans and Jack Hobans of the world.

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Braden Nicols

[Bradenn]

Yes, I agree with what a lot of what you said.

The moderators would probably need to get involved to delete controversial nominations as well as to stop any bad-mouthing. (Also preventing people nominating themselves!)

However, I'm sure there lots of teachers out there who will be draw much more praise than bad-mouthing.

At the end of the day, there is no substitute for getting there and seeing for yourself, but if there is a way to point newbies in the right direction then why not ...?

[John Lindsey]

One of the best things a student can do is to go to a Bujinkan Taikai and see the other instructors, and see how and what Hatsumi S. is teaching. Another option is to purchase the Taikai videos. These options will at least let a new student get a better feel for what the art is about, and how their teacher fits in to the system.

[Tamdhu]

I think these students get what they need when they come here or go to kutaki.org and ask about training in xyz town or city. They usually get a few responses with some amount of word-of-mouth accreditation, which is about as valuable as they're going to find on the web.

A specific thread or section would be interesting, but also would be complicated for the reasons already mentioned.

[El Guapo-san]

The post about going to a TaiKai is spot on. At least theoretically, it's great to see the top folks in action, and then you can judge what is gonig on locally. Not everyone can do this, but if you're on a trip to Japan for some reason or other, stay over and go to Hombu once. It'll give you the feeling that what you're seeing in seminars is good or not. Did for me.

Unfortunately, I had no idea what I was doing and missed most of what was being taught and put me off gonig to seminars for six months while I learned more basics, but that's beside the point.

J Vlach
Amsterdam

[Rolling Elbow]

Nomination would never work... take it out of he hands of other shidoshi for a minute. What you are left with are :

A. People with no martial knowledge or poor martial arts understanding who perceive an instructor as being "excellent" or

B. A tough or strong individual with some fighting knowledge who sees a class or two and decides that what is taught would "never work" and therefore is "crap".

Too hard to do. Look around and watch videos and compare different teachers in different systems to each other and then to the ones you have seen in he Bujinkan. Then you decide how good each instructor really is, and how the sysem will bennefit you. If you feel the system will but the teacher will not, then you pick another system.