Northern Ireland dojo

Hi,
I was wondering if anyone had any information about dojo in Belfast, Northern Ireland. I have been training for just over 4 years at a USAF dojo. I may be moving back home within the next year and plaln to continue training. The only dojo I can find online in Belfast are Aiki No Michi or Tomiki affiliated. Are the training styles similar? Would my rank be accepted, or being a new system, would I start all over? I was also interested to know whether there are any ASU affiliated dojo in Ireland?
Maybe an interested Sensei would consider a move to the emerald isle??

Thanks in advance for your help

Jude

Judith McSpadden wrote: Hi, I was wondering if anyone had any information about dojo in Belfast, Northern Ireland. I have been training for just over 4 years at a USAF dojo. I may be moving back home within the next year and plaln to continue training. The only dojo I can find online in Belfast are Aiki No Michi or Tomiki affiliated. Are the training styles similar? Would my rank be accepted, or being a new system, would I start all over? I was also interested to know whether there are any ASU affiliated dojo in Ireland? Maybe an interested Sensei would consider a move to the emerald isle?? Thanks in advance for your help Jude

Hi Judith,
I do not think your rank will cross over. The Aikikai doesn't recognize ranks from outside organizations and I wouldn't expect that it would work the other way around. I would think that there would be an Aikikai dojo around but there are no ASU dojos as Sensei has limited official membership to the US and Canada.

There was some discussion on the Aiki no Michi style.
Aiki no Michi discussion

What you are used to doing would fall somewhere in the middle of these two styles I think. In terms of preparing you to do the kind of Aikido Saotome Sensei does, the Tomiki folks would give you better preparation I think.

If you do not intend to train with a given group over the long term, there is a mechanism, I believe, to maintain an individual membership in the ASU. You could probably maintain your rank by coming back to the States for testing. But not all dojos would be open to having one of their members do that and you'd have to work things out with Patty Saotome Sensei if this was the path you wanted to take. It would really only make sense if you thought you'd be coming back to the States at some point. Otherwise, you might as well find a dojo you like and bite the bullet and retest.

Thank you for your response...I do hope to come back, but I have no idea how long it would be until I do so. Visas are hard to come by

Judith McSpadden wrote: Hi, I was wondering if anyone had any information about dojo in Belfast, Northern Ireland. I have been training for just over 4 years at a USAF dojo. I may be moving back home within the next year and plaln to continue training. The only dojo I can find online in Belfast are Aiki No Michi or Tomiki affiliated. Are the training styles similar? Would my rank be accepted, or being a new system, would I start all over? I was also interested to know whether there are any ASU affiliated dojo in Ireland? Maybe an interested Sensei would consider a move to the emerald isle?? Thanks in advance for your help Jude

Hello,

I think there are some dojos in Northern Ireland. A 4th dan named Cherchini teaches there. He was taught by Hiroshi Tada from Italy.Look on Google for Aikido Organization of Ireland. The link is http://www.aikikai.ie/

hi,

Just wanted to drop a few lines and say that I actualy trained there in the Ai KI no Michi dojo and had a super great time with many different people who all wanted to train.

I say "give it a shot"....

no pun intended

TD

The AOI is all in the Republic. The Dundalk dojo would be an hour or two away from you.
There are at least two other aikikai groups on the island that have regular seminars with visiting instructors:
The Irish Aikido Federation http://www.aikido.ie/ under John Rogers 6th dan, Hombu instructors visit annually for weekend seminar.

Aikido in Dublin
http://www.dublinaikido.com/wp/ under Cyril Lagrasta 4th dan, had Christien Tissier over recently.

For a fairly comprehensive listing of Aikido Dojos in Ireland both north and south visit http://www.aikidoinireland.org/index.htm the guy who runs this site Aureli used to practice in Belfast.
I've trained in Belfast a good few times and always had a blast.