Pictures from my test are up on my flickr site. Here is the direct link.
While it looks like we are the only people on the tatami, there is actually another group behind me. Only two groups of people were tested at a time, the matspace was divided into half for this. Each half was about 12 x 20 tatami. Pretty large as you can tell by the picture.
If there was any doubt that I failed, let it be gone. I was fitted for hakama and new belt today. Plus they dropped the bomb on me telling me how much it costs to register with aikikai..
Shodan fees are as follows:
One time aikikai registration fee:
Shodan Test fee:
Intrntl Passbook:
Shodan Fee:
So total: 22550y
With the dollar where it is now, I will say roughly 210$USD for shodan.
Of course, had my school in america *been* aikikai, I wouldn’t be paying this much.
The funny thing is that nidan, sandan etc are double the prices. So nidan registration fee is 20200y, sandan is a little over 40000y and it keeps going up. Big money for aikikai yo.
sweet man! so when you come back to the states, are you going to open a school? move to c-ville…we need real aikido here. all we have are iwama style and ghey ki-style stuff.