This program should not be seen as an escape from life . . . although it may well be an escape from yours, and a door to a better one. Life in the dormitory will not resemble, in any way, a vacation. The program's sense of adventure will subside dramatically by the end of the first month only to be replaced by bitterly hard work, training, and fighting, day in and day out, with relatively few breaks in the routine. There is no glamour to be found here until the day you graduate. Think of this program as a boot camp that never ends. This is not a opportunity for dreamers to foster a fantasy that they are anything that they’re not or that they can do anything that they can’t. If you don't feel like a natural athlete now, you'll sure feel like one by the time you complete this program. But such rewards don't come easily. You will be beaten every day, not necessarily with physical blows (although those days will come too), but definitely in terms of coming face to face with your physical and spiritual limitations. 1 OF 10 TO ENTER THE DORMITORY WILL GRADUATE ! You will be tested even in your first days and weeks to determine the extent of your desire to be one of the few that make it. Where there’s a will there is a way . . . but your will, will be tested.
If you do graduate, you will not even recognize your memories of the physically weaker, spiritually frailer version of you that entered the program just three years earlier. Regardless of your natural talent, previous experience, personality, or athletic ability, if you can endure this program, you will be one of the best at what you do by the time you complete three years of dormitory life. Physically, you will be a machine. Spiritually, you will be unstoppable. Mentally, your eyes will have begun to open to a better world that you didn’t even know existed. You will be at a level where you can teach karate to others and in fact Budo Karate House will help you to open a dojo of your own. -- But don’t let such a vision fool you. 900 days into the program, you will feel just as scared, lonely and exhausted, just as beaten, battered and bruised, as you did by the end of your third month.
Students applying to this program must demonstrate an ability to leave everything behind. Your family may visit you occasionally to see that you’re still alive and healthy; you will of course be allowed to write letters; but you will NOT be allowed to leave the program for at least your first six months and in most cases probably your entire first year on anything that resembles a vacation. Even after your freedom to come and go increases in your second and third years, you will not leave the program without permission until the day that you decide a life of Budo karate is not for you and then, if you leave (i.e. without permission), you will not be allowed to re-enter the program. Understand that the applicant with the best chance of success in this program, regardless of prior experience or athletic ability (or lack there of), is the applicant with nothing to lose and nothing to leave behind. It is what you miss of your current life that will make dormitory life seem impossible.
