Oops, I’ve been so busy with keiko that I almost never noticed that we turned two last month!!
I must admit that this last year has been incredibly hectic keiko-wise and as such I probably haven’t dedicated as much time to kenshi247 as perhaps I should have. We still managed to churn out almost 60 articles in that time however… more than one a week (my ambitious goal).
Honestly speaking, the site has been a lot more popular than I predicted… perhaps vindicating my personal opinion that the English-speaking maturing (matured?) kendo community is not only ready for more quality kendo-related budo material, but craves it! And not only the English speaking community either, as many articles have been translated into various languages: Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Hungarian, and Chinese to name a few.
In addition to working on this site and running my own kendo club at work, I also attempted to catalogue my daily kendo life in a photoblog (harder work than it seemed in the beginning!) as well as continuing to organise Eikenkai, the only non-Japanese run kendo group in Japan with a permanent dojo (afaik).
Eikenkai and kenshi247 are essentially the same entity, so to see two of my friends (both kenshi247 contributors and Eikenkai members) have a successful kendo year cannot go by without mention: my first sempai, Steve, from Edinburgh kendo club came to Japan and passed his 6dan under severe local testing; and my friend Andy moved to Kyoto and opened his own online kendo shop, Miyako kendogu.
Tomorrow I will head back to Scotland and visit my parents and generally take a break from keiko and kenshi247 for a bit (sorry!), but while I am there I will run a small kendo workshop in Edinburgh, and I will also take time out to consider the future direction for the site.
Anyway, too much chat. Thanks for reading the site and commenting on articles (here or on facebook) and I hope we can continue to provide interesting, informative, and educational information to the kendo community at large for the foreseeable future.
Please remember to join us on facebook.
Cheers from Osaka!
