You will, though. Next August. Watch out for that bus, by the way.
I took one look at that puzzle, and realized I had seen it in the early 80s. I played with the online puzzle for a few minutes, and then I remembered the solution. It’s pure geometry and similar concepts known to Western science since the Greek Empire.
It’s a bad translation, the original is Control Mental - it actually means Self-Control only with mind-over-body connotations.
I am irresistibly reminded of its British equivalent, as popularised by acknowledged masters The Goodies:
Monty python also had a spoof of this, reborn in web form here:
I trained in this martial art from before Hatsumi-sensei changed the name to Bujinkan and tried to clean up the image a bit. As a martial art, there are a lot of good principles and techniques. The problem is — especially back when it was still called Ninpo-taijutsu and traded heavily on the Ninja image with some of the instructors in the West — it attracts more than its share of weirdoes.
Even among the misfits, this guy stood out. Van Donk carried the nickname “Van Dork” and was not really well respected. He was (and apparently still is) relentlessly self-promoting, to the point where whenever someone so much as thought about pointing a camera toward Hatsumi, or one of the more famous Western students like Stephen Hayes or Jack Hoban, he’d come running to insinuate himself into the picture somehow. Not a bad guy, per se, but possessed of a salesman’s personality, and a bit loopy to boot.
The belt system was changed by Hatsumi to go up to 15-dan several years ago, so he’s not claiming some ridiculously inflated rank, actually. There are quite a few individually good teachers in the Bujinkan and Hatsumi and some of the other guys who train regularly in Japan are really damn good. The problem is that there are a lot of guys like this cluttering up things. For the record, Hatsumi and Stephen Hayes parted ways quite a while ago, not coincidentally when Hayes started doing stuff that bears a lot more relation to cult religion than martial arts.
I had forgotten that claim. But then I ended up only skimming much of the book. I still have it somewhere though (I think.)
Out of curiosity, what is Hatsumi sensei’s program like? I was under the impression that there was no such thing as formal “ninjutsu”, but rather a disparate set of techniques that were passed from person to person… is Hatsumi sensei teaching a single, cohesive style that he learned, or did he more centralize all the stuff he’d been taught under a single “style”?
“Choosing the right universe to live in” sounds like a much more profitable skill than mind control.
Heck, I’d choose the universe where I win the lottery.
Every.
Single.
Time.
Of course, that leaves the sticky problem of what to do with the “me” already living in that universe, but that’s just a minor detail, quickly resolved with a sharpish knock to his (my?) head, a shovel, and a bag of lime.
Knowing my luck, that’d also be the universe where every day is Monday.
There are nine schools or traditions (ryûha) that he inherited, only two of which are Ninjutsu and one of those includes a lot of chemistry and medicine, with almost nothing in the way of fighting. The martial arts is mostly from the non-Ninja schools, though you could argue that the main difference between Ninjutsu and plain old Bujutsu is mindset and approach. He usually does theme periods where they concentrate on one school or one subset for a while. This year’s theme is Kukishin Ryû, which is one of the older schools in the set and so has a wider focus than some of the later, more specialized schools. The idea they’re working on right now, according to one of the training blogs I’ve found, is deception; specifically leading your opponent into thinking he can nail you while you’re actually setting him up for something nasty.
There’s a certain amount of cross-pollination and syncretism both because fighting is fighting, and because one guy collected all these things and made them into one school, but the focus of the style really ends up making the movements fairly distinct. For example, Gyokko-ryū uses a lot of pressure points, and so has an emphasis on precise strikes to specific vulnerable areas, lots of redirections and subtle ways of creating openings to exploit. Kotō-ryū takes a brute force approach, since it’s a school of koppo-jutsu, or bone-breaking, and basically everything is an attack. A block is treated as an opportunity to damage a limb, the movements are more linear and direct, looking quite a bit like old traditional hard-style Karate in some cases.
As far as overall teaching style, Hatsumi-sensei encourages improvisation and adaptation. All of the good teachers, who trained with him regularly, had a very practical outlook on what we were doing. I’ve seen some of the ideas that we were dealing with almost 20 years ago coming out in the practically oriented systems that are getting popular now, and we were dealing with mixed martial arts ideas before MMA really got started. Hatsumi would often say things like, “Of course no one carries a sword around any more, but you can do the same movement with a kitchen knife, or an umbrella or something.”
He’s way different from most traditional Japanese martial arts teachers, and his style of training, which trickled down to my teacher, frankly spoiled me. I’ve found most of the other martial arts I’ve done in Japan to be lacking since they do nothing but rote repetition, almost no adversarial training, and some of the situations have become so stylized that the meaning behind them is lost. There is no “good guy” or “bad guy” in most of the Bujinkan scenarios. You try the technique and your training partner will try to help you get it, but if you screw up, his next bit of “help” will most likely be something painful that he was able to do because of your mistake. You learn what works and what doesn’t pretty darn fast that way.
Training at the Hombu-dojo usually consists of Hatsumi doing something, showing a couple of variations that might happen because the parameters are different each time, and maybe offering a comment or two on what your focus should be. Then he’ll almost inevitably say, “Understand? Play!” and off we go. Going to train with him directly is like going to a high-level college lecture class. You do a LOT of homework on your own trying to figure out what you were just taught, and he doesn’t do a lot of review.
There’s a whole category known as vanishing puzzles that have been known for ages. Like Scuba_Ben said, it’s merely a geometric trick.
There’s a huge one of these puzzles on the wall of a bar in Milwaukee. It’s maybe 20 feet long, and you move it by hitting a button. When I was there, it certainly defied me. But, I’m a liberal arts major, and I was pretty drunk. I always assumed that “Western science” was on top of it.
You clearly don’t know anything about ninja magic.
Here is a good youtube video of some martial arts bullshit exposed.
“Go”? Dude, you’re already here. 
Ah, this guy and Count Dante are wimps. This guy could take them without breaking a sweat. 
On a serious note: I am a professional martial artist. People like these bozos are nothing more than crotch rot on the balls of humanity.
That is astoundingly stupid. The “kiai master” seemed like he had never taken a punch in his life, much less a kick to the head. You have to wonder if his students are all morons, or if he paid them to fall around on camera, or what.