Montana

Personally, I wouldn't depend on books, as that may be flawed or outdated. I'd go to the government website and get it directly.

If I understand what you're saying, we call that body shifting, or "change of body". EXAMPLE: Instead of stepping back away from the attack, there are several ways, but you can step forward at an angle, shifting your body away from the attack and placing yourself closer and simultanously attacking them. Easier to demonstrate than to write it out. Old style Okinawan karate does a lot of this. Kinda hard to get the timing down, takes a lot of practice to do it automatically and correctly, but once you get it it's like a lightbulb going on and it's very effective. More for self-defense, but I have used it successfully in sparring.

You mentioned you have a school in Washington State. I don't see it listed, what city?

Think of the nunchaku like a nut cracker. Two ends applying extreme amounts of force on a central point. Now, think where you can apply that force, such as wrists, elbows, neck, feet and ankles.

Definitely wear a black belt. Although they are not the same, they are similar enough to warrant wearing the rank that they hold that is the highest.

In that situation, since Kudo and TKD are totally dissimilar systems from a kata perspective, I'd allow that. Sparring events would depend on the sparring rules.

We do our kata one sequence at a time to the call/count of the sensei. In a class of students, it's less chaotic and allows the sensei to watch each students movement. Someone making a mistake stands out pretty obviously that way as opposed to one student being on the 8th move, another on the 7th, another on the 12th and another finishing.

I saw this once at a tournament I was judging at. One of my fellow judges pointed out someone to me wearing a mid level colored belt and said "Wasn't that guy wearing a black belt and judging at a tournament last year?" So we grabbed the tournament promoter and the 3 of us went up to the guy as he waited to compete in kata and asked him. He said "Yes, I'm a black belt in a different style, but I'm a student under this other guy now." He got booted...

I started writing a big, long dissertation on my 50+ years of observing different systems I've encountered and paid particular attention to the "self-defense" techniques. I started naming names of systems and my observations as to their effectiveness in an actual fight, and my opinions, take it or leave it, as to what I felt their effectiveness would be. Upon re-reading what I wrote, and not wanting to get permanently BANNED from Karate Forums, I deleted it all before I added it to this discussion. What I taught my students is that there are different levels of self-defense, depending on the given situation. For example: If you are assaulted by a knife wielding drug addict intent on drawing blood, you would use as much power as necessary to stop that person. Is he 6;6" tall and 300lbs and charging at you like a freight train? Is your wife, g/f or child with you? Or is he your best friend that's had a few to many drinks? The amount of force and type of technique you would use would be totally different.

Think of the nunchaku as a sort of "nut cracker", but with a rope/chain. There's an incredible amount of potential power there. Any traditional art that uses the nunchaku in its arsenal should be able to show you.

Please God, NOOOOO!!!

In my dojo, as with my sensei and his teachings, I used these MINIMUM times between a students belt testings 10-7th kyu. Minimum of 2 months of training per belt. 6th-4th kyu. Minimum of 3 months of training per belt. 3rd-1st kyu. Minimum of 4 months of training. 1-2nd Dan. 2 years 3rd Dan. 3 years ETC. Just because a student has that amount of time in doesn't mean they automatically advance. Requirements and skills must be met. As for the longest time I have had between testings, it was 9 years from 1st Dan to 2nd Dan. My sensei left the state about 6 months after I received my 1st Dan and I had no way to advance. It took me 9 years to find somebody.

OMG!!!WHAT ARE YOU DOING??? NO FINGERTIP SPINNING??? NO HOLDING THE "CHUCKS" CLOSE TO THE ROPE??? NO FLIPS? Are you telling me there's somebody that can hold and move a nunchaku properly??? *THUD* Is there no end to the madness when somebody does a weapon properly???

What is your current rank and system that you study? Why do you only want to learn a specific kata, yet don't want to know the reason for the movements within that kata?

I have questions about this also. There's something specific you want to learn from this sensei? What is it? In my own experience, I've had people want to join my dojo just to learn KOBUDO/weapons, nothing else. most had ZERO martial arts background, training or experience in any martial arts, just wanted to learn weapons. My response has always been "Sure, you can join the class and in about 2+ years, depending on how you train and progress, I'll start teaching you weapons." So far, no takers...