Hello from Dallas Texas

[Wilkes]

Hello and happy new year. I just joined the group and the hobby. I have a Shintoshi background but I am new to this aspect of the practice. I live in the northwest corner of Dallas County and am looking for tradiitonal beginner intruction Japanese Sworsmanship. I am not into competitions but would rather study the Kata Forms and the culture itself. Any advice or guidance would be greatly appreciated.

[pgsmith]

Greetings and welcome to e-budo.
You only have a couple of options for traditional Japanese sword arts in the DFW area. First is John Ray in Denton teaching Muso Jikiden Eishin ryu iaido. John is a long time practitioner who is very skilled, highly ranked, and well regarded within the Japanese sword art community ... http://dentondojo.com/

There is a Takamura-ha Shindo Yoshin ryu affiliated dojo at SMU. They are primarily jujutsu, but there is quite a bit of sword in their curriculum ... http://www.shinyokai.com/home.htm

Robert Lange teaches Fred Lovret's Tenshin ryu kenjutsu out in Lancaster ... http://www.nikkodojo.org/

I run an official study group for Meishi-ha Mugai ryu in Richardson just off of Central and Spring Valley. Information about our study group can be found on our web site (a work in progress!) ... http://sendokaitexas.com/

That's pretty much it. The only other option that I know of is the DFW Kendo and Iaido Kyokai, which you said wasn't what you were looking for ... http://www.dfwkik.org/dallas/

Cheers,

[pgsmith]

Just saw your other post in the Sword Arts forum. Glad you found something you like, they are a really good bunch of folks at DFWKIK. One of our guys just recently started kendo there also.

[Wilkes]

Thank you, that is good to hear. They are the closest to me and also appear to have exactly what I am interested in. They also immediatly returned my email inquiry and just happen to practice in my old high school gym....I am class of '75 so I am sure it has changed, but if there is not a touch of destiny in there somewhere, I would be very surprised.