... continued from Part 1. "Toxic Sensei Syndrome"
Welcome back to our series on the insane experiences at the Boston Shinkendo dojo.
If you read part 1. (Toxic Sensei..) then you have some insight into the personality and behavior of this nut-ball joke of a Sensei;
"little shaffee".
So, you read about all his butt kissing and boot licking in an attempt to be "Yuki's boy" and you also know about his lunatic ravings and abusive behavior toward students in the dojo, (including towards his own kids). You are aware of his insane megalomania and control freakishness... now wait till you read this one!
Horror at Honbu
In August of 2019 the ISF held a seminar at the Honbu dojo in Los Angeles. A group of the Boston Shinkendo students expressed interest in attending, as this was a great opportunity to get exposure to Kaiso and Yuki Obata, as well as other Shinkendo instructors and students from around the world.
When they told little shaffee they wanted to go, he immediately began a dictatorship approach to the agenda that included controlling all aspects of the students travel and lodging arrangements.
At first you might think him managing travel arrangements is something innocuous, but in reality, we felt his intent was to control what hotel we stayed at for a few reasons, firstly, he was bringing his kids, two of them in the 16-18 age range, and another was under six, and we believed he wanted the students to basically be baby sitters for his kid, and secondly, we surmised he wanted to utilize any hotel points from the students (roughly 7 of us) for his own benefit.
Kinda cheesy yes, but that was just the beginning.
He then ordered the dojo to bring gifts to Kaiso, and the other Senseis, things like wine, whiskey etc, which he pawned off the expense for purchasing onto the students. They were ok with doing this for Kaiso just felt disgusted in the way he handled the request.
(I was later informed that one student was reimbursed for some of this expense).
Now the students didn't want to be saddled with his kids all day, they wanted to stay together in a nice Air BNB in downtown LA, so they could take advantage of the city and its sights when the seminar was over.
They had no desire to stay in what appeared to be some cheap ass flea bag motel in the middle of some ghetto outside the downtown area.
When told that we didn't want to stay at his hotel, little shaffee went into a rage, ranting and raving like a loon, and in frustration he assigned the arrangements to a senior student to handle, yet there was motive in this as well.
This senior student is a nice guy, but also one that we believed little shaffee felt confident he could control. He worked offline with him via private txt to get the scoop on what we (the students) were planning to do and try influence what we planned, of course invoking Kaiso Obata's name every 5 seconds in order to manipulate our decisions.
This senior student who was close with the others, and also DID NOT WANT to stay at little shaffees flea bag motel, was now in this uncomfortable middle man position trying to broker little shaffees demands with what he and the other students wanted to do as a group of friends.
Life became hell for months for this poor guy, and when the students didn't succumb to the pressure, little shaffee became so resentful the abuse level in the dojo rose exponentially, and student morale plummeted.
The more he abused the students, the less motivated they became and all training suffered. In turn he then started accusing the students of not being good enough to visit Honbu, when in reality the seminar was open to the public for all, even those who did not attend Shinkendo.
So after weathering about 4 months of this abuse, the students, including the poor senior guy (man did that dude take an emotional beating), they finally got their travel booked, and left for LA.
Keep in mind the costs involved here, per student there was the actual ISF seminar fees, the airfare, the lodging costs, food, etc. on average each student spent approximately $1700.
The students arranged to get their early, with a few arriving late, their plan was to be able to have some time hanging out together in LA without the baggage of little shaffee dictating every moment of their day...
Great idea in theory, until little shaffee informed them that, in his usual boot licking fashion, he was texting privately to Yukishiro Obata about his students arriving to the Honbu dojo early to for any special training.
So he had Yuki there at the dojo early to accommodate us, (Yuki is a decent fellow).
Except for one problem, none of the Boston students other than one, had ever been to the Honbu dojo (and that was several years prior), so the students did the most logical thing, and that was to visit the Honbu website, get the address and use Google maps for directions.
Which they did, and arrived 30 minutes early as planned.... problem was, this IDIOT OF A SENSEI "little shaffee" didn't bother to tell them that the location of Honbu dojo had changed and the website was not yet updated at that time
The actual location was on the other side of town from where they went.
However this didn't' stop little shaffee from calling the students "stupid" and berating them about how disappointed he was... yet despite this, the students managed to haul ass across town, (in LA traffic mind you), and make it to the new location only about 10 minutes late. Where a friendly Yuki greeted them with a smile, and laughed off the tardiness as no problem at all, and being a logical person, he understood what happened,
Although I'm pretty sure he thought little shaffee was a moron for not giving us the right address.
The Seminar
Little shaffee had not yet arrived when the seminar began, he showed up three hours later, although our 10 minute tardiness qualified the students as stupid. (nice huh).
So the students did their thing as good Shinkendo practitioners, they assisted the Honbu members with all setup, helped where the could, and did their best to represent Boston Shinkendo in a respectable way.
Kaiso, Yuki, and all the other sensei's where great, they were welcoming, helpful and excellent teachers, in fact everything was great until little shaffee arrived.
As soon as he arrived the entire mood changed, when in the first half of the day the Boston students were integrated in with all the rest of the attendees, we now had to stand apart from them, and only the senior students were allowed to take part in any of the demonstrations. Basically this was his two kids, and two senior students, the remaining five from Boston who were low rank, had to stand around and twiddle their thumbs, taking part in only those activities that were done as a full attendee exercise.
Think about this, these poor people spent $1700 dollars to attend a seminar and weren't even allowed to take part in any technique that little shaffee claimed were advanced!
NOTE: as the seminar was open to all, there wasn't any truly advanced techniques taught except to select smaller groups of advanced students.
It seemed to us that in his mind little shaffee was doing two things; first he was punishing the majority of the students for not kowtowing to his hotel wishes, and secondly he didn't want to be ashamed that his students form wasn't perfect!
Now keep in mind these are students whose experience in Shinkendo ranged from 3 months to 2 years, so even if they weren't perfect in form, who cares, they are students, that's why they are there, to learn!
However the students got a laugh from this seminar as well, there was one point when all the instructors were taught something new by Yuki himself and all students stood by and watched, well ha-ha little shaffee was now learning something new, and BOY DID HIS FORM SUCK ASS!
Just like the students he is so fond of berating, he made mistakes, messed up, and took a while to get the technique properly executed. (what a schmuck).
After a while Yuki noticed that the Boston students were standing around so he approached us, I can clearly remember his words:
"Why are you guys standing against the wall, get out on the floor and start training" he said. We responded "that our sensei told us to watch as these techniques are too advanced for us" and he looked at us like we were crazy and said "get out on the floor and train!
We here very happy to get this directive and actually got to learn something from the great instructors at Honbu dojo.
You wanna laugh though? As we were training, little shaffee was watching with a scowl on his face, (clearly annoyed), when Kaiso Obata walked up, he noticed that one of the Boston students, a guy who had only been a student for 3 months, was not doing a technique correctly, he looked at little shaffee and and yelled at him. "Why are you standing there, why are you not teaching him to do it right" Kaiso Obata then personally stepped in and gave us instruction which was an honor to us all.
However this sure didn't reflect well on boot-licking little shaffee...
The next day we all agreed to get sushi for lunch, we asked little shaffee if he and his family wanted to join us, apparently little shaffee was hoping to get an invite to some event that Kaiso and family were doing, and told us to go on.
Well outside the dojo, we were getting everyone packed into the van, when we noticed little shaffee and family walk out. LOL (apparently they didnt' get invited).
However rather than join us, he did the old psssst, pssst... calling to one of the two senior students he knew for many years, and invited him to a personal lunch with him and his family and cast the rest of us aside.
LMAO, while some people may take offense by such behavior the ENTIRE GROUP OF BOSTON STUDENTS WERE HAPPY AS HELL, not to be stuck with him at lunch!
Later on that senior student expressed his regret for not being able to join us.
So the rest of the seminar was pretty uneventful as far as little shaffee goes, we did learn some great stuff from Yuki, and got to take part in the Japanese Nisei Festival where the Honbu dojo dresses in full Samurai armor and marches in the parade carrying flags and doing sword demos.
Another funny moment is when our dear beloved little shaffee was doing a demo in the parade and he couldn't even get his katana drawn from its sheath, because he was apparently wearing his armor improperly. (in front of hundreds of people) ......and this is the guy who was worried we would embarrass him.
WHAT A SCHMUCK!
Once we returned from LA, things went back to the same old same old.
We did get feedback that Yuki was positive on the Boston students for how we conducted ourselves when we were there, helping out, and supporting Shinkendo. Of course little shaffee claimed the credit for this. LMAO!
Then a few weeks later, in one of his punishing moments, little shaffee told us that Yuki said the Boston students were below proper skill level for individual rank
I for one don't believe Yuki ever said such a thing, I believe it was another spiteful little shaffee comment designed to manipulate and hurt people.
-YOU DECIDE IF THIS IS THE KIND OF SENSEI YOU WANT TO TRAIN WITH-
That ends this chapter of the Boston Shinkendo Series,
it is continued in Part 3. Don't be a Boot-Licker (What really lead me to share these truthful experiences at Boston Shinkendo, and the adverse affect they have on the art itself).
Also, please read my Blog post on SHINKENDO HERE <- this is relevant to later chapters in the series.
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