22
01/10
19:25
Kendo convenience
Japan is well known for her honesty. If you dropped something, chances are it’ll still be there when you return to look for it. I don’t think anyone appreciates this honesty as much as a kendoka (剣道家), a kendo practitioner. In Japan, instead of carrying our kendo gear around everywhere, it is perfectly ok to just leave it in a corner out of everyone’s way. Leave it in a corner, go shopping, have lunch and it’ll still be there when we get back.
Kendo armor doesn’t come cheap. A decent set might cost anywhere between ¥50,000 and ¥60,000. Anything more than decent, the sky’s the limit. To me, Kendo armor is a very personal piece of equipment; that’s because we sweat half our body mass into it.
Although I can’t imagine anyone wanting to use someone else’s sweat doused kendo armor, I’m sure if we left our stuff unattended anywhere else in the world, it’ll be gone in 2 seconds… maybe even 1.
I used to practice Kendo everyday when I was in Sydney. I was quite active within the UNSW Kendo Club. We had many club activities. Competitions, training trips, paintball, beer etc. The Force was strong in our club. We won many competitions. I left my medals in Malaysia before I came to Japan. Hope they are still around. ^^.
When he was around, Futoshi was our club ace. He’s back in Japan now. Last I heard, he was doing pretty well in the coast guard. He loves the sea.
This photo was taken during our Melbourne training trip. I’m somewhere in there. ^^. We visited every Kendo dojo and trained with everyone there. It was a great experience. I carried my bogu and shinai everywhere I went. Never left my sight even for a second.
Do you Kendo?
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k Reply:
January 23rd, 2010 at 10:52 am
I don’t want to see Japan going down the same path as the US in this aspect. Hope people will continue to respect and not start abusing Japanese honesty.
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