Dojo choice?

Hello all. My name is Seth and I'm 18, from Tacoma, Wa. I stumbled upon this forum and have to say, it has been a great form of answering many of my new-to-the-art questions that have tickled my mind. I even cancelled a very ignorant purchase of a Valiant Armory Battle Ready Katana, upon reading a thread further down the index of this forum. I felt completely worthless after searching and shopping for a "real" katana for months, and immediately after purchasing one that I thought must assuredly be the best on the market, stumbled upon this forum; cancelled my order 5 minutes after browsing this forum... I placed an order for a Bugei Crane instead. [IMG]http://www.fightingarts.com/forums/ubb/smile.gif[/IMG] tsuka - 11, blade - 28.5
My specs: 5'11", 145 lbs @ 4% body fat. Very active.

Anyways, I've always been into swords, both east and west. I have a collection of great fantasy-sword movies, of which I replay over and over again to my delight. Shogun Assassin (1980), is my all time favorite. I used to take scraps of wood (and sometimes still find myself doing this), carving them with my knife and sanding them down into swords. Broadswords, katanas, ninja-to, short swords. I have a whole collection. I swing them around, trying to emulate motions I see in movies, but always end up looking stupid.

I was in tae kwon do for several years, going at a slow but steady pace and acquiring a green belt before quitting due to personal reasons. Anyways, as I see it, and upon reading this forum through rather savagely, it's time for me to begin my sword art training endeavor. So, I searched for kendo/iaido dojos around my area and could only come up with one selection.
http://www.kendo-pnkf.org/index.phtml

It looks like a very big, well organized choice to me for learning. However, I'd like the opinion of some of you people on this forum about this choice. Would it be well? I'd be going to the Tacoma Washington chapter. It has both kendo and iaido classes. I'm just unsure as to whether or not this would be a poor waste of time for learning the art, and I should seek lessons that are more "privately instructed" on a 1 on 1 sort of basis...

Any input would be greatly appreciated, thank you very much.

Seth www.fallenthoughts.net

[This message has been edited by Akedes (edited 12-17-2004).]

[This message has been edited by Akedes (edited 12-17-2004).]

[This message has been edited by Akedes (edited 12-17-2004).]

Ray-sensei always says that the dojo environment where you learn amoungst several different students of varying skill levels is a superior enviornment to one on one training. I tend to agree, but then I'm biased [IMG]http://www.fightingarts.com/forums/ubb/wink.gif[/IMG]. There's nothing wrong with some one-on-one instruction now and then, but the meat and potatoes of dailying training is best off in a class.

I suspect you could do considerably worse than the PNKF.

You are also lucky in that you aren't all that far from Seattle, hey it's in state. Seattle is considered by many to be the Budo Mecca of North America. There are several very highly ranked practitioners of various koryu Japanese Sword Arts. Should you ever find cause to move to Seattle you will have quite a bit of high quality instruction to choose from.

Ah, ok. Thank you very much for the quick reply. I have a question now, though, stemming from what you just told me. Should I just say forget the PNKF and go to a dojo in Seattle? I'm only 50 miles or so. 45 minutes to an hours drive on the freeway. Could I do PNKF for a year or so and get some of the basics down, then go to Seattle for a more "advanced" training? Or would going to PNKF then transferring just set me back by learning from one master, then a different master. Possibly learning "the wrong way."