But knowing a lot of techniques is not the object. I try to emphasize understanding the basics and the advanced techniques will come. Anyone is welcome to take weapons from the beginning. Aikido is a very weapons-oriented martial art and it is important to move to higher levels of understanding Aikido. I use the weapons now mainly as tools, tools for understanding Aikido because I think that as a weapon you won't use these anymore.
People use guns, among other things.
Of all the weapons we use the tanto is more like a modern weapon of choice. People use knives and smaller-type weapons as a whole. I think that weapons training is good, it gives you a different, better understanding of techniques. So you would say you incorporate weapons into regular training instead of a weapons class. It's good to have weapons class separately, but as technique itself is weapons oriented technique it should be one in the same.