April 2008
This notice is to serve as a warning to anyone considering studying Yoshinkan Aikido with Geordan Reynolds in Pattaya (Thailand) or doing business with his company Edu-Specialists.
I trained with Geordan Reynolds in Pattaya during 2005-6 and in July 2006, both myself and another student tested successfully for shodan. Geordan collected our application fees(1) but almost two years later, he still has not submitted anything to Hombu(2). I am no longer in Thailand and all attempts to follow-up on this have been unsuccessful since he is ignoring emails and hangs up the phone when I call.
Geordan is perenially short on money and I know for a fact that he has "borrowed" a substantial amount of money from at least one of his students. This loan was made several years ago and since Geordan has shown no indication of ever paying the money back, the student has given up hope on it and written it off.
It is clear that he has simply pocketed the money and hoped that we would forget about it. I would suggest you keep this in mind if you ever consider having any dealings with him.
Taka Muraoka
April 2008
Update (Nov 2008)
Shioda Kancho, the head of the International Yoshinkan Aikido Federation, has kindly agreed
to process the shodan application without fee and has launched an investigation into this instructor.
Update (Feb 2009)
Wow, it turns out that this is not the first time this has happened. He's done it to students in the US as well.
Update (April 2009)
And not the last. A friend of mine reports that the same thing happened to him in April 2008 (I left Thailand shortly after grading which is why he didn't know about what happened).