photo by JP Puerta
When I was quite young the first dojo I ever joined was this Ninjitsu club. All the students there were adults, apart from me who had only reached the tender age of seven at that time. The club was my first introduction to martial arts and despite the fact that I was just a kid compared to the other students I integrated well into the classes, doing as much as I was able to for one so young. It was here that I was taught the basics, how to punch and kick properly, how to move in and out of stances and how to breakfall correctly.
The thing I remember most from these early sessions was the brutal stamina training that went on for an hour or more before we did any martial arts. The instructor would often take us out into a football pitch and make us do punishing circuit training that involved running laps of the pitch, sprinting up and down the grassy banks until it felt like our legs were going to drop of before making us do tens of push-ups and sit-ups. It was gruelling and very hard work. It wasn’t unusual for one of the guys to be sick occasionally from over-exertion, although they got no sympathy from anyone.
Sympathy was in short supply at this dojo. If you got hurt you carried on. If you so much as moaned about it being sore then you were asked, in no uncertain terms, to leave the dojo until you were ready to join in again. “I won’t have tears in here!” the instructor (a high ranking and well known ninjitsu-ka) would shout. “Take it outside!”
These guys took their training very seriously. Each of them had a weapons bag, containing all sorts of deadly instruments including a commando knife that some of them would sit sharpening outside the dojo while they waited on the instructor to come and let them in. All of this was fascinating in my young eyes. These guys were the hardest men I had ever seen. They were killers and no one was going to mess with them and they knew it.
Despite all of them being Irish, each student, upon entering the dojo, would bow to a huge Japanese flag that hung on the back wall. I did this as well, thinking such behaviour was normal. (See previous post.)
They also trained with live weapons. Knife attacks were done with the aforementioned razor sharp commando knifes. One day in particular I watched in horror as one of the seniors got his finger chopped clean of when he failed to control a knife attack properly. His little finger lay on the floor in a pool of blood. Seemingly unconcerned he calmly picked up the severed appendage, bowed to the instructor (who barely acknowledged the accident) and left the dojo to go to the nearest hospital. To this day he is missing that finger. The doctors were unable to save it. He was back in training the following week.
Another time I witnessed one of the younger seniors break the arm of the girl he was training with. The girl left alone to go to the nearest hospital. She never came back. The guy said it was an accident, though every one else knew different.
Shortly after this incident I was asked to leave the club. I was told I was too young to be training in such advanced classes. I didn’t disagree. I left and joined another dojo, where I remain to this day.
My next encounter with the Ninjitsu guys was several years later. Throughout that time I was often told stories about them by people who frequented a local nightclub, where a group of the Ninjitsu guys had formed a bouncing team. Every week it seemed, they were using the club goers as training dummies, busting heads at every opportunity. The reputation of the club began to slide. None of the other martial arts clubs around had any respect for them. The Ninjitsu guys were “assholes” in most people’s eyes.
Anyway, back to my next encounter with them. I had accompanied a friend to local nature reserve to do a spot of night fishing at the lake there. It was almost two in the morning when we both heard movement in the bushes behind us. I picked up my friends flashlight and shone it into the darkness, probing the trees and bushes but seeing nothing. I shook my head and was about to settle down again when a black figure suddenly leapt from the bushes into the light. I jumped back, startled and afraid until I realised the figure was dressed in a full Ninja suit, complete with sword on the back.
“Oh my God,” I said, and shone the light elsewhere, spotlighting another ninja climbing around a tree and another two crouched in a patch of long grass.
I squinted at the ninja facing me. “_____!” I said, saying his name, for I recognised him through the mask. In fact I recognised all of them. How many other Ninja’s were there around here apart from these guys?
Upon hearing his name the Ninja seemed surprised, obviously not recognising me from years ago when I trained with them. I could see his eyes widen. Caught out!
He grunted something in Japanese and him and his fellow Ninjas scuttled of into the darkness again, their mission, whatever it was, suddenly compromised by some kid who knew their identity.
My friend and I looked at each other for a moment then we both burst out laughing. We rolled around for ages, unable to contain ourselves, unable to believe that we had just witnessed a bunch of grown men prowling round a nature reserve at two in the morning dressed as Ninjas. We still laugh over that till this day.
Who needs Ninja movies when you have your very own local ones?
image by eryn.rickard
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