I told a friend that I was going to take Judo and he told me that I should consider taking Shorinji Kempo. Well after he told me about it I still have a lot of questions about it, he made it sound like a Karate Judo mix, but after looking at a few web sites and some clips of it on youtube it looks like a Karate Aikido mix and I was hoping that you could please give me a better idea as to what it is. Thanks

....mmmm...did for a couple of lessons in Japan, and although the people there were nice I just couldn't reconcile what they were saying with what makes logical sense about how the styles founder learned his art. Doshin So, that's his name, supposedly was sent to China in the 30's as a member of the ultranationalist Japanese group to infiltrate Chinese resistance fighters, became friends with a Shaolin monk and learned all that he had to offer and therefore is the one and only Shaolin Kungfu. Shorinji = Shaolin, Kempo = ChuanFa. Anyway, that is the story that I was told by Shorinji people I met in Japan, even though there are no records of him at the Shaolin temple, or of him studying with any recognized Master. Mix in some Budhism, as he was a monk as well.
However, to me it looked more like the basics of northern styles of kungfu, with a lot of Aikijutsu, which apparently Doshin So did do a lot of training in.
Check out Don Draegers "Modern Bujitsu and Budo" in which he talks in more detail, and accurately than I have.

I trained with Shorinji guys in Switzerland for about 6 months.
There may be a hip toss and a trip here and there, but it is generally geared MUCH more towards striking. You definitely do not get the depth of kuzushi-tsukuri-kake, and there's really no groundwork. They do a lot of scripted sparring sequences with real contact to the body, but virtually no aliveness.
And they are focusing a lot on philosophy.

It is certainly interesting culturally, but you may be disappointed if you are in for sport and live sparring.

Tomas

That's certainly a surprise. With all the gear (more than TKD sparring gear) that they put on, I would expect them to be very alive with respect to training.

I recall someone remarked once that Shorinji Kempo was the "thinking man's martial art" because for some of the belt tests, the practitioners had to write term papers. But as Tomas pointed out, the art seemed to have a heavy philosophical draw...even more so than judo.

There used to be Shorinji Kempo practitioners frequenting E-budo. They may still be there. Drop by there to get another viewpoint.

Doshin So never studied at the Shaolin Temple whether Northen or Southern for a good reason, he was studying with some Chinese masters or experts while infiltrating certain areas in China, mainly in Manchuria where probably most of the Japanese were highly concentrated(and many Japanese experts were there also at one time but I don't have time to list all their names now). The methods that So uses are interesting but they are not the 'five animals' that tend to comprise most of the so-called Shaolin methods, another interesting topic, that I don't have time to discuss now. Shorinji Kempo is controversial,of course, and many have questioned it and continue to do so. There are other groups that use a similar name as well but are not connected with Doshin So.