I'm buzzing so i'm gonna write something.. maybe nonsensical but this is what I think sets my ol' Norcal dojo apart from the others. 1.) Our sensei. Hashimoto Sensei - one of the most laid back and most understanding senseis out there. He is always there to teach and I always appreciated him being there for us. I have seen some scary similarities between him and the current Venice head instructor. Yoon Sensei - OMG! This guy can chomp down food. I have caught him eating the following before practice. Mcdonalds fries. McRib sandwich. Chimichangas. And you know what? You can fit two of him in me! His favorite condiment is BBQ sauce and meat consumption and meat cooking are his specialties. And oh ya... hes really good at kendo. Shig Hamamatsu sensei. I gotta give my props to shig because he basically taught me a lot when he was there. Some have said that if i do kendo in my straightest, purest form, i start to look like him. (if shig is looking at this, he MUST be insulted! ) He can not show up to regular dojo practices, come to godo keikos (1x a month only) and still kick ass in a tournament for 5dan and up... 2.) Games. we did suriashi dodgeball. that was carazy! 3.) This is the only dojo where we can bribe the sensei (guess who) with meat to lessen the number of concentration drill suburi we do. We all were playing online Diablo 2 for a while. We can be talking about kendo at one point, talking about rockets the next, heat transfer (we had engineers at our dojo from Stanford, me being one of them), airplanes, cars, and back to kendo again. 4.) Good mix of ppl. Races, backgrounds, religions, etc. And we had no problem bowing to shomen! 5.) *on a more serious note* It was the first place ANYWHERE where i really didn't feel like i had to live up to anybody elses expectations and I was free to go at it on my own terms and my own pace. (of course I still went every week.. but thats another story)