I will stand as the lone dissenting voice in the forest. I will no longer purchase hakama(their weapons cases however are hard to beat)from Bujin. My review may be read
here.
I've actually had much better luck with a cheap $50 tetron hakama I got from
E-Bogu. I also use one of these for iaido and the knees are holding up extremely well.
One of our students got a tetron hakama from Mugendo Budogu, it was nice and the price was good but on closer examination it appeared to be the exact same thing I got from E-Bogu but I got mine at a little over half what he paid. Later he got a Tozando hakama for his birthday. It is very nice and should I choose to have a more premium hakama in the future I'll probably go with them.
The little plastic spoons in the back of the hakama always seem to rip off. The guy mentioned earlier with the Mugendo one had his come off at our summer camp. No big deal really except when it went it made a great big hole at the base of the koshiita. My tetron one also lost it's spoon but it was just the strap holding it on that let loose. In the future I'll most likely just cut these off of new hakama. His Tozando came with long loops of material in the front and back to hold the hakama in place. It seems to be a much better system than the plastic spoons.
My girlfriend also made me a hakama using the pattern from
Round Earth Publishing. She made the koshiita so the insert can be removed by opening a Velcro flap at the bottom. I read somewhere that a mouse pad makes a good insert material, I may try it.
Bronson