Ah, nice to hear from the others! Thanks for starting a nice topic Jeikobu!
That's impressive Jeff_W. You must have worked hard to have earned your shodan! Congratulations!
I think the hardest part to this? Is finding a good instructor!
When I lived in Ohio, there wasn't anyone near me teaching sword arts. When I came to California, I found a great dojo between my workplace and where I live, and so now I've been doing it for 4 years. Just starting the fifth year and still loving it!
I am preparing for my shoden demonstation that will be coming up at some point in the future. Whenever sensei decides he is seeing what he wants. (aaah!) For us, the shoden is the first true rank to earn. Sensei bestows his own form of a shodan rank at the 2-3 year mark, depending on how you train and when you've got the basic "boot camp" completed. Then we start learning the material to prepare for shoden, and keep on polishing all the basic stuff, too.
Our sensei organized a trip to Japan a year and a half ago, to train two days with his sword instructor there (he also has a jujutsu instructor in Japan, too). Then we went around Tokyo site seeing. And next spring, we're going back again. But this time, we'll get to go see Kyoto and Nara after we train the two days.
Having started training in sword was a great thing in a lot of ways, besides just the awesome part of getting to travel to Japan. It even helped with my horse riding and showing, and sometimes, I use some of the principles at work, too. <smirk>
And yes, Shishio, you are right that many samurai trained in jujutsu, too. There's a whole bunch of things samurai could be trained in, depending on their rank, ability, location, and available teachers, including how to swim in armor-jutsu (I can't remember the Japanese term for that one)!
I hope you do get to back into training someday.
