Ippoippo

Oooo errrr! Nothing saucy in that topic though…

Yesterday, I progressed from the Kendo beginners lessons now into the full class.
So far, the class of 9 learners are all still there, but it will be interesting to see who keeps up with this.

We now take part in a lot of the exercises with the main class, including the formal etiquette. We still don’t have our “Gi”, which is the basic clothing and certainly not the armour.
However, the real step up was having to take part in doing the suburi (素振り) with the others. That was hard work, but a great bit of exercise.
We’ve also started looking at doing kata, using bokken.

Next week is half-term, so the school gym used by the club is not available… which is a real shame. I’ve just got to keep practicing a little everynight getting all the foot/arm coordination right (though it’s hard to do in the house on a carpet floor, and with not enough ceiling height to swing my shinai or bokken.

Kendo is proving to be most enjoyable. This week, did some more foot work, plus started to introduce using the shinai in some moves. Right at the end of the evening, we had to start shouting kiai [気合]. In this case, it was simply ‘men’ because we were simulating a blow to the head.

Still haven’t worked out if I should just shout it in a gruff manner, or go for the full blown Mifune Toshirō accent!
I need to ask an old work colleague of mine for advice on the later

Anyway, with all this Kendo going on at the moment, I spent some time looking around the net when I came across an old National Geographic programme about the 8th Dan tests for Kendo. This was a programme I saw a while back, and seemed to have sparked a little bit of interest in it.

What is more impressive, is a small segment about 10th Dan kendōka (people who do Kendo). There are no 10th Dan graded people alive, and nobody has recently ever been granted 9th Dan status!

Unless you’ve been away from the TV, you’ve probably been seeing scenes like this on the TV.

According to Uncyclopedia, what we are actual witnessing is a new Extreme sport, called Extreme Torch Relay. As you can see, France is currently leading the scoreboard!

Seriously though…

Part of me thinks these protests are great. Given Chinese actions in Tibet (though, it’s not all a one-sided issue), then it’s all well and good.
However, I think some of the French protesters took it a little too far when they went for the torch at a stage when it was being carried by a lady in a wheelchair.

Also, I get the feeling that a large number of these ‘protesters’ are actual just a bunch of troublemakers who’ve found a nice excuse to kick things off. It’s a real shame because this is a real chance to have a very public protest against the Chinese government.

I also see that in Japan, they don’t want the Chinese security runners there, when the flame gets to Nagano.

[Kendō o shimashita yo]…

or “I did Kendo“.

Last Saturday, I went to watch some club regulars (those who’d been doing it from over 10 years, to a mere one and half) do their regular practice. This practice was for those with their own armour (called bōgu). Watching that session pretty much confirmed that I wanted to sign up to the six week newbies course.

So, that’s where I ended up yesterday evening after work. I’ve been issued with my bamboo sword (shinai), and if I want to start getting into it and practice kata [型] (formal set patterns) I’ll need to get a Bokken [木剣] as well.

Being the first lesson, it was pretty much etiquette, some basic footwork and how to hold the shinai correctly. All good stuff and I can’t wait to next week’s lesson (though I have to practice each night now, to get my ankles flexible enough for future lessons).