A poet by nature, an English teacher in a foreign land by trade; Twigger takes the bit between his teeth and enrols on Tokyo’s infamous riot police course – a gruelling year long course at the local Yoshikan Aikido dojo, with a hard reputation for breaking people.  Very quickly we get to know the other ‘foreigners’ on the course, men from all over the world who have earned their black belts and come to test their metal.  But there’s just one problem...  The closest Twigger has come to learning a martial art is reading a seventeenth century samurai manual.

This is a very difficult question for me to answer; just look at the name of my club: Leeds Traditional Martial Arts.  I regard traditional values in very high esteem; having had experience in teaching more commercialised martial arts, I get a great deal of pleasure in going back to my traditional roots with my small community of students.