Happy holidays! Usually at the end of the year I review what has been happening on kenshi 24/7 but this year has been rather thin pickings again, with only 14 articles published (this being the 15th). This has partly been due to the ongoing pandemic (at least, it seems to be still ongoing here in […]
* Note that the seminar has been overbooked and registration has been closed. I am pleased to announce that the Edinburgh kendo seminar is back on in 2023!! The 2020 seminar was cancelled and we couldn’t hold anything in 2021 0r 22 due to you-know-what, but we are back… with a vengeance! If you don’t […]
As readers of kenshi 24/7 of course know, I have been involved in writing kendo stuff online for a long time… but maybe you don’t know exactly how long. kenshi247.net started in 2008 as an evolution of a blog I had started 5 years earlier in 2003. The prior instance of the site was a […]
A few months ago I started to realise that the tare I usually used for my daily work practice was reaching the end of its life. Well, the body of the tare itself was fine, but the obi – the belt – was frayed to the point that it could rip apart at any moment. […]
Yesterday, for the first time this year, I held an Eikenkai session at my work dojo. Twenty-one friends gathered together representing something like ten countries (Japan, China, Scotland, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Croatia, America, and New Zealand) for a spirited morning of keiko. A couple of us arrived at the dojo at 7:30am-ish to practice […]
Ten years ago today, I self-published “Kendo Coaching Tips and Drills.” At that time it was the only English language kendo instruction manual that didn’t focus on basic stuff like how to fold your hakama or the names of the parts of shinai*. Instead it introduced footwork and wrist drills, gave ideas for basics and […]
In 2017 I (very happily) shared the news that I was given a ukiyo-e (nishiki-e) of a famous (and extremely historical) kendo scene from 1873. Almost exactly a year after, I detailed my totally random find of another ukiyo-e from the same period and the trials and tribulation I went through to get my hands […]
When I arrived in Japan permanently in late July 2003 (of course, that wasn’t the plan at that time…) it was to a small island in Hiroshima prefecture. Before arriving I knew that there was a shonen kendo club based in the local junior high school, but I didn’t really know what to expect. I […]
In November 2015, a year after he passed away, I wrote about a particular sensei who had inspired me (“T-sensei” I called him). Although eight years have elapsed since he passed away, I know that his teachings are still alive within me. Just recently, for example, I instructed my students to – when doing a […]
I’ve been practicing kendo for, what, about 30 years now. Or nearly that, I’m not exactly sure. In that space of time I have collected so many kendo-related bits and bobs that I have lost count. Well, after moving to Japan that is – before that (20 years+ ago) there wasn’t really anything kendo-related to […]