Dear Dojo Dominatrix...
We ran into a problem in training and wanted your advice.
Recently while training in hojojutsu and one of the particulary tricky ties where maintaining the correct diamond pattern is so difficult, my training partner was screaming out the correct safeword, "sea dolphin" but since we were training in a traditional Japanese art at the time, I felt she should have used "Umi no Iruka".
After asking the local nawashibori groups, who all looked at us like we were nuts, the other gimps, err, students, wanted to ask the sage advice of you. Scott Irey feels that the spirit is the main thing, but the language used is important to help instill the correct spirit, but in advanced gim... students, the language used didn't really matter.
Do you feel that not using the Japanese language in cases like this is OK? We feel that not using the Japanese terms in training causes one to lose the cultural connections which attracted us to training in the first place. Please let us know what your position is in this situation. We have 12 bamboo rod lashes riding on the answer!
Eagerly awaiting your reply...