> > > (Dave was an accomplished ninja of 7 years.)
> >
> > There are ninja dojos in America? And ninja are prepaired to tell others about this? Studying the arts of stealthy assassination doesn't seem too consistent with the moral code Dave displays elsewhere in this post.
>
>I knew him for about 3 years and he was able to indirectely convince me at numorous times that he was a practicing student of a particular skill that of ninja.

Speaking as a former ninjitsu student myself, yes, it is easy enough to find dojos teaching it. Whether or not there is a genuine historical connection to the arts taught in the old-time ninja clans of Japan is open to speculation. Having done a few years of both Shotokan karate and Togakure Ryu ninjitsu, I think it depends a lot on the particular ryu and instructor.

We did learn some interesting things which I don't think you would get in other branches of martial arts, but those could have just as easily come from modern sources, military hand-to-hand combat training or various mental and spiritual exercises.

I personally take it with more than a grain of salt when anybody (and meaning no disrespect to your friend, *especially* a teenager) says they are "a ninja". A student of modern ninjitsu, fine. A ninja, no. That's like me saying I'm a knight because I learned fencing at university, or a samurai because I did martial arts for a while. Ninjas are a group from a particular time and era of history, and if there still are any real ones, they're certainly not running around in suburbia telling their friends about it.

Learning their skills, developing their mindset and even living according to their moral code doesn't make you a ninja or samurai either. It just makes you a modern person who finds those things to be of value and leads their life according to that belief. Of course, now we're getting esoteric, and into the realm of word definitions and nit-picking technicalities. Oh well.

Brunnen-"has been beaten up by the finest proponents of numerous martial arts"G