The latest Eikenkai (and last for this year) was held last weekend, on Saturday the 28th of September. A bunch of friends were visiting Japan from Manchester Kendo Club which provided just the excuse I needed to host a session!
All in all, joining myself and the 11 kenshi from Manchester we had another 30 or so people (I didn’t count exactly, but there was maybe 45 participants or thereabouts) from various parts of the world including: America, Brazil, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, England, France, Hong Kong, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Romania, Scotland, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, and Venezuela. This included two hachidan for keiko and another who could only make the the post-keiko drinks.
Since I had booked a restaurant for a meal and drinks afterwards the kihon portion of the session was much shorter and easier than normal – about 30 minutes of super basic stuff. This was interspersed with occasional advice from one of the hachidan. After the kihon session we then did jigeiko for about an hour.
After the all-you-can-drink time limit expired at the first restaurant we crawled out and went to one or two more places before calling it a night. I think everyone had a great time!
Media
Since I have to kind of run things I can’t really focus on taking pictures or vid, but luckily a friend brought their camera and took some snaps. The colours pics are his, the black and white mine.
The next day one of the Eikenkai participants and I (he is an old kendo friend I hadn’t met in 10 years) spent the day in Kyoto visiting some famous kenshi’s graves. We visited the resting places of Naito Takaharu, Monna Tadashi, and Ogawa Kinnosuke sensei. We also went past the place where the meetings where held about Kendo-no-kata a hundred years ago, as well as the Butokuden, the venue for the Kyoto Taikai, itself. We didn’t go, but I pointed out the place where the Kitano Butokuden had been moved to. He suggested I should write a kendo tour-guide article explaining the route. Maybe I will!
