More about Ninjas

Well I was talking to a friend of mine who read my blog, and he told what he knew about ninjas. Apparently he has taken some Japanese history or something, so he's pretty much the authority around here... except me... and Real Ultimate Power...

So, they apparently never were assasins, but intelligence. They would pretend to be a samurai, and get into the castles, and sneak around there to spy on the samurai in the castle. The samurai would only allow a few choice people in his prescence, so stealth was of the greatest importance. When the ninja got what he needed, he could just sneak away, and casually walk out. After all, no one would both to stop him as he was a samurai, or just looked like one.

To combat this, the samurai anchored their floors on the sides instead of the middle, so any ninja trying to sneak around would start the floors creaking. Tokugawa Ieyasu actually hired a bunch of ninja for his body guards, and according to that friend of mine, had them disguised as gardners.

I guess all that answers my question about Hattori Hanzo in samurai armor. So those few assasins from my previous ninja article didn't even exist? Oh well. And actually, also adding to that article, ronins were actually the samurai of fallen/dead lords, not the actual lords themselves. So if they were serving under someone, and that someone was killed, they would wander around until they were hired by someone else. Hope that clears everything up.