Ninja Kids Dojo (@ninjakidsdojo)

Snow Leopard Ninja Kids Dojo — My Vision Beyond the tatami. A complete human being. I have spent thousands of hours training martial arts since I was eight years old. After earning 8th Dan, I wanted this path to become part of daily life — and I wanted to share it with people who had never stepped onto a mat. Before Ninpo, I trained in Judo, Karate, Tai Chi, and Taekwondo. In most dojos those arts are taught as what I call tatami martial arts: one person against another, with a limited set of tools (fists, kicks, throws) and a set of rules for engagement. I later worked as a bodyguard in a very dangerous city and slept with a loaded gun under my pillow. That is why I took on Ninpo. It goes beyond the tatami. Standard education systems like K–12 in the United States generally do not treat cooking, self-defense, survival, or first aid as core skills. They are mostly designed to prepare children for college. Homeschooling is becoming more popular, often with strong academic results, because families want more than that. Ninpo has 18 main areas of training. They range from hand-to-hand combat, Japanese sword, and stick fighting to traveling at night by the stars, walking and running long distances, and survival. I have added languages, with English as the main language. Why English? It is the working language of computing, medicine, aviation, and many other fields. This is not about the United States or the United Kingdom. English spread worldwide during and after the age of Queen Victoria and the British Empire. We also teach basic first aid, nutrition, journalism, medicine, computer science, and both armed and unarmed fighting skills. Why? Because a ninja is meant to be a complete human being. Above all, we teach ethical and moral values and civics. We want every ninja kid who graduates from the Black Belt Curriculum to become a useful, reliable member of their community — someone who knows how to live, who can make a difference, and who can help others in an emergency.