Ninja, the stealthy assassin of feudal Japan, has never fail to capture people’s imagination. Ninja has been glorified by TV shows and movies, which prompted the young me to picked up the lesser art known as Ninja-do almost twenty years ago. However, much to my disappointment, Ninja-do was nothing but a form self-defence, much like Tae Kwon Do, but only much brutal. There’s no black getup, nor were there shuriken (Ninja throwing stars) or Sai. All it had were just good’ol punches and kicking, and ‘self defense’ techniques that either aims to maim or kill. If only we have Yagyu Ninja Academy here, I would not have taken the Ninja-do route.
Yagyu Ninja Academy is the one and only Ninja school in Japan where Ninja enthusiasts can pick up the art of Ninja including knowledge on oriental medicine and handling of iconic weapons like shuriken, sword, blow gun, et cetera. Though we doubt the real art, which is known as Ninjutsu, is part of the curriculum as there are only one and two-day courses available. A Ninja, if there’s still any relevance today, is an extremely demanding art that covers everything you need to carry our spying or god-forbid, assassination.
In any case, the course fee pretty much says it all; all Yagyu Ninja Academy asks is 2,000 Yen (about US$17) for the one-day trial course, or 4,000 Yen (around US$34) for the two-day course. Surely, a real course won’t be so short or cheap, right? But what do we know? The masters might be legit descendants of ninja clan who are scouting for unsuspecting ‘talents’ in the art of Ninja?
