Amos: there's no testing for belts after 3rd dan. After that, the rankings are awarded based on what you give back to aikido, is my understanding.
Littledragon, it's pretty clear that you don't know that much about aikido. I don't know that much, myself; I'm still learning, of course. What I do know is that aikido is something you study over a long period of time. Techniques are learned in stages and are perfected over time. The number of days is a minimum; some people take longer to achieve each level. One of the techniques, iriminage, has a nickname - it's called the "20-year technique", meaning that it can take at least - and note that I say AT LEAST - 20 years to learn to do properly. We have a black belt in our dojo who's been studying aikido for more than 20 years and even he admits that he hasn't got iriminage perfected.
When I told someone who took karate that it usually takes up to 7 years to achieve black-belt status in aikido, he couldn't believe it - he'd gotten his black belt in karate within a year.
There's nothing fast about aikido. To quote O-Sensei: "In your training, do not be in a hurry, for it takes a minimum of ten years to master the basics and advance to the first rung. Never think of yourself as an all-knowing perfected master; you must continue to train daily with your friends and students and progress together in the Way of Harmony."
Yudansha - there is no possible way to learn the techniques within the level expected in a shorter period of time. Some people do learn techniques faster and master them very quickly. Those are the ones that usually wash out of aikido very quickly, as well, because they think they've learned it all.
There were a lot of people who started around the same time I did, and they had learned ukemi, for example, very quickly and very well. What they couldn't take was the repetitive practice. Doing the same techniques every class, over and over and over again. It's taken me six months to learn the simple tenkan; and that's because I've done it every single class - 90 classes - since I started. And I still get corrected by the instructor.
Mind you, I do it well enough now that my partners have to adjust their stance so they don't end up flying into the wall. But now I'm learning to do it dynamically, faster and with the eventual intent of making my partner fly into the wall (hopefully he'll stop short of it). Even the black belts get corrected by higher ranking black belts. It's a constant learning process. It's not BUSINESS - it's just the way aikido is learned.
