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. […]
I read an anecdote many years ago (when, where, and by who by I can’t remember*) that has stuck with me over time. In it a kenshi tells the story about how they would often go to the Nippon Budokan for keiko, walking up a sloped path from the nearest station, Kudanshita. En-route sometimes they […]
I have been wearing masks constantly for the last six months (since mid-March. I wear one in the supermarket, on the train to work, at my desk, in class, and, as you know, during keiko. My beard+the humid Japanese summer just makes things worse. But, as things stand at the moment, life might be this […]
For as long as I have been writing kenshi 24/7, and even before then, I have been very picky about shinai (and to a lesser extent, bokuto). Whenever there is an article in a kendo mag about someone’s shinai preference, I read it. I have also spent many years not only trying out different shinai […]
Last year my high school kendo club celebrated it’s 60th anniversary. 60 sounds a lot, but the school itself was actually founded in Meiji 19 (1886), over 130 years ago, when the girls department of the Osaka-fu Shihan Gakko (“Osaka Normal High School”), separated itself into a different institution. Of course, long term kenshi 24/7 […]
So, a few months ago someone posted a comment on the kenshi 24/7 Facebook page saying that I have a kote fetish… they were right! Kote, along with men and of course shinai, are one of the most important equipment needed by any serious kenshi and are worth, I believe, investing time and money in.
A few years ago, I am not sure how many exactly, but it wasn’t soooo long ago, a slow change in the garments people were wearing for keiko began. Thicker, heavier dogi were giving way to super light and sporty “jersey” types, especially keikogi. These super-light keikogi looked (and still look mostly) absolutely awful… at […]
Updated: to read my opinion about how the kote performed six months after writing this article please see the updated comments after the gallery below. A couple of months ago, completely out of the blue, I was contacted by a representative of Bushizo, a relatively new online kendo equipment reseller based in Tokyo, and asked […]
I love bokuto and own more than a few… maybe about 20 in total nowadays. For the first few years of my kendo career I had a single kendo odachi and kodachi pair, but over time, as I got more into classical swordsmanship and the history of kendo, I started to collect bokuto from different […]