Dojo [道場]

The characters/ideograms mean "hall used for martial arts training; manda (place of Buddhist practice or meditation, esp. the place under the bodhi tree where Buddha attained enlightenment)." The first character means, "road-way; street; journey; course; moral; teachings," the second character means, "location; place." 

Traditionally the dojo is a training hall or place where one follows the way of their respective martial arts system, i.e. kendo, aikido or karate-do. It is also used to designate where Zen Buddhists practice zazen meditation. It is theorized that originally, in Japan during the feudal era, the first dojo were actually referred to as "juku" or specialized private tutoring schools. 

I don't have a dojo. I train wherever I can when I can. In the past I trained seven days a week. In the last five years I find it enough to train five days out of seven with those five being any five of seven days. It all depends. 

I don't train anyone except through posting such as this. It is how I want it. I had a dojo where ever I was stationed when in the military and for a good number of years as a civilian working for the Department of the Navy through what I called Special Services and now I believer referred to as Moral, Welfare and Recreation. 

You learn the greatest amount about martial arts and/or self-defense in the dojo. Training for any physical discipline really works best through both repetitive practices with hands on tactile type training supplemented with visual and auditory instruction. Keeping it also depends on continuous types of training. Initially it takes a lot but to keep it up once you ingrain it is about periodic refreshers. You as an individual practitioner will be able to determine of often both are needed to encode things. 

The dojo is the only place where one can practice and train to the point where they encode instinct based techniques, the quick and effective self-defense skills that are necessary to handle that type of conflict - assuming one is unable to avoid, deescalate or run. The dojo is where a group of like-minded individual can exercise and train the body, mind and spirit - the naturals of these so that you change instinctual responses into trained-instinctive responses. This refers to those anatomically, mentally and spiritually driven individual traits inherent in all of us.