For no particular reason I have declared this week “Ninja Week” here at robohara.com. I hope you enjoy the stories of my ninja training and recon missions.<\/i><\/p>\n

I had already been taking karate lessons for a couple of years when I first saw Enter the Ninja at a sixth grade slumber party. Although the time frames slightly overlap, the ninja fad essentially ended my interest in the breakdancing fad. As much fun as breakdancing was, there was no doubt in my mind that in a fight, a ninja would defeat a breakdancer every single time. That pretty much sealed the deal for me right there.<\/p>\n

To the average twelve-year-old there’s not much difference between karate and ninjitsu — both involved kicking and punching, so in my mind I was already practically a ninja. The only two things I needed was a ninja suit and some weapons.<\/p>\n

For quite some time I had to improvise when it came to a ninja suit. I had a black karate uniform (a “gi”), which worked pretty well. Ninjas also wore black split-toed shoes (“tabi”). I didn’t have any tabi, so instead I wore my house slippers and then put my dad’s black socks on over the slippers and tucked my pants legs into the socks. Ninjas also wore a classic mask and hood; since I had neither, I simply wore a black ski mask. In my mind, I was now a ninja. In reality, I looked like a cross between a well-fed tick and a sloppily-dressed terrorist. The irony in all of this is that ninjas were support to not<\/i> be conspicuous. In this outfit, I was as conspicuous as they come.<\/p>\n

Next, I needed weapons. After watching Enter the Ninja and Revenge of the Ninja, I made myself a list of weapons I would need: a sword, a staff, a bow and arrow, some ninja throwing stars, a blowgun, and some caltrops. <\/p>\n

My first sword was a wooden one that Dad cut out for me. It was pretty two-dimensional, but it worked and was thick, like a club. There was no chance of stabbing anyone with it, but wielded like a club it could do damage. Plus, the possibility of inflicting an attacker with a splinter was very real. Later that year for my birthday, I got a “real” sword. It wasn’t sharp, but it had a sharp point. I once tried to stab Jeff with it after he accidentally cut me with it. Jeff took a lot of abuse during my ninja-training days.<\/p>\n

Dad also hooked me up with a bow and arrow (which I was actually pretty good with) and a blowgun that he made for me at work. I practiced a lot with the blowgun on the side of my dad’s shed, but had to be real careful as I only had three darts and they were easy to lose in the grass. Between the metal blowgun and a quiver full of aluminum arrows banging around behind me, there was pretty much zero chance of my sneaking up on anybody unless they were deaf or already dead.<\/p>\n

In seventh grade I traded a kid a stack of pirated Apple II games for a three pack of throwing stars. Two of the stars had four points each. One was shaped like a star and the other was more of a swirl design. And while they looked cool, I never got them to stick into anything. The third star was Chinese and had something like twelve points and it would stick into anything, including fences, our doghouse, and my bedroom wall. Between those stars, the blowgun and my arrows, it’s amazing my parents did not have to re-sheetrock the entire house.<\/p>\n

Also in seventh grade, I learned how to make caltrops. In reality, caltrops are tiny spiked pieces of metal that hurt like hell when you step on them. They are designed to have enough spikes that no matter how you throw or drop them, one point is sticking straight up. Supposedly they work pretty well at stopping both anmals and soldiers. A schoolmate of mine showed me how to make them by using a pencil eraser and a bunch of straight pins. They worked really well and I would sometimes practice by throwing them into my bedroom curtains. It goes without saying that eventually I lost some of them, and found one the hard way while wearing socks in my bedroom.<\/p>\n

At some point I also ended up with two pairs of nunchucks, one covered in foam rubber, the other wooden with a chain in the middle. I distinctly remember buying the wooden ones at school for ten bucks (a week’s worth of lunch money). With the way the world is today, it seems incredible that I was able to acquire nunchucks and Chinese throwing stars in my middle school cafeteria. I’m pretty sure if you tried that today you would skip detention and go directly to Guantanamo Bay.<\/p>\n

One of the biggest influences on me at that time was the book
\nNinja: The Invisible Assassins<\/a>, by Andrew Adams. Adams’ book explained all about ninjas: how they acted, how they lived, and of course, how they trained. Throughout the summer of 1985, this was my training manual. After reading about becoming one with their surroundings, I would climb trees and sit there for hours (or until I got hungry), watching people come and go. I learned and practiced ninja hand signals. I also spent time practicing outside with my sword, preparing for the missions to come …<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For no particular reason I have declared this week “Ninja Week” here at robohara.com. I hope you enjoy the stories of my ninja training and recon missions. I had already been taking karate lessons for a couple of years when I first saw Enter the Ninja at a sixth grade slumber party. Although the time frames slightly overlap, the ninja fad essentially ended my interest in the breakdancing fad. As much fun as breakdancing was, there was no doubt in my mind that in a fight, a ninja would defeat a breakdancer every single time. That pretty much sealed the… (read more)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1894\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}