„I recall of a story that once Sensei told us, while he was in Japan he visited a holy place and suddenly and uncontrollably he started to laugh from happiness. I’m talking of that laughter, when your heart and soul tremble as if you have experienced the supernatural. In some way I feel the same myself. Maybe some will think: ‘It’s just a river, training in the water, and that’s it.’ But Sui Ren for me is really emotional, and I still cannot figure out why. Maybe it’s that way because it’s taking place exactly after five years from the last seminar, and at that time I was younger and everything looked surreal to me. Maybe because Sui Ren is a method that the ninja developed to perfection, and that impresses me. Maybe because it is in water, and it’s a real challenge to endure seven hours in such environment. Many of you won’t ever understand that you could make so many exercises in one river. To ‘invent’ so many ways to hide yourself. All those stories that Sensei told us during the seminar were unbelievable, but all these year that we passed that legendary river too. The notion that every year the seminar takes place at a different location only contributes and increases the excitement. We left our youth on that river and I’m proud of it and don’t regret even a second, just the contrary. I thank Sensei that he made me ‘stuck’ the whole night writing a densho for hours.