What a dojo is
Dōjō means the place of the way. It is not a description of a building. We hire a hall — it has mats and a kamiza, and for the length of a class it is a dojo, because of what happens in it and how the people in it behave.
That is the whole reason etiquette matters here. It is not decoration on top of the training; it is the part that turns a hired room into somewhere you can trust a stranger to throw you. Everything below exists for that reason, and for no other.
Wooden weapons form part of training.
If you are coming for the first time, your first visit covers the practical side. This page is what happens once you are on the mat.
How a class opens and closes
Every class begins the same way. Students line up in seiza — kneeling — facing the instructor.
This is when the instructor checks whether anyone is carrying an injury he should know about, asks whether anyone would like a technique explained further, and sees how his students are. If your shoulder has been troubling you all week, this is the moment to say so.
Instructor and students then bow to each other, and the class begins.
A class ends the same way: lined up in seiza, and a bow between instructor and students.
There is no bow to the kamiza.
A visitor who wishes to bow to the kamiza may do so. Nobody is asked to.
Why we bow
People are often too polite to ask whether the bowing means something religious. It is a fair question and the answer is no. In this dojo a bow is a greeting and a mark of respect between two people — the same work a handshake does, in the same places: hello, thank you, I am ready, we are finished.
You bow to your partner when you ask them to train and when you thank them afterwards. You bow to the instructor at the start and the end of class. That is the whole of it.
It is worth knowing why it happens so often. Aikido cannot be practised alone: every technique needs someone willing to lend you their balance and trust you with their safety. The bow is how that gets acknowledged — not once at the door, but every few minutes, all the way through a class. What we practise, and why takes that further.