Kendo, it stinks! Literally!

 Kendo, it stinks! Literally!

To make it more interesting let's use live metal blades and no padding. Now, that would show who is the Last Samurai!

If you’ve ever seen The Last Samurai, you probably thought sword fighting is the coolest thing ever. Little boys no matter what country use sticks, brooms and pens to battle each other. I was never that good at it as a kid. I used to get hit, so I’d run and throw my sword or in this case my stick at them.
The moto “stand and fight” never stuck well with me, I always prefered “flee like a wimp and throw things”. Hope to live another day.
Regardless I thought THE LAST SAMURAI was so cool, Tom Cruise with his Scientology and their aliens that made the earth storyline. Oh wait! Sorry that’s real life.
I can’t deny he was very cool with his damn swords and training as a Samurai.
In Japan though, you can’t really train with real swords (for fear of cutting each other in half), although to be honest that would be pretty cool. Imagine seeing people practicing and they are like “Oh dude, wait wait, I cut your arm in half”. It would be like a scene from Monty Python Holy Grail.
Kendo is pretty much the closest thing to real swords, but its done with wooden swords (called shinai in Japanese). I always thought, if I get the chance I’d like to see someone do it. As its kind of like make believe being a samurai. That being said if you have ever been unlucky enough to watch Kendo before, you already know what I'm going to write about.
One of our school students was in a tournament on a country wide sports day. Since he was the only one from our school, he was unique at the tourney with no support. I went to go see him with the vice principal to give him a cheerleader. I thought it was also a chance to see some Tom Cruise like battles fighting to the death albeit with wooden swords.
Just prior to walking into the gym the Vice principal said to me, "Get ready for it, as soon as we walk in a very special smell".
I was thinking WTF does that mean! Then as we walked in I understood. The putrid smell of stinky, salty sweat! It was overwhelming to the point of almost throwing up. It was a horrible horrid smell. Let's called it the HH horrible horrid smell. 
He informed me that after a short time I would get used to it. I was thinking whatever time short is determined to be is going to be too long. He told me it was even strong for him and he was used to it, since he taught Kendo near his house. I guess because they have armour on, they sweat profusely underneath the armour. He said they could wash the gi (marital arts clothes) part of the cloth, but not the rest. Remind me not to do Kendo, unless I have a severe nose cold or a clothespin on my nose.

That's what my girlfriend always says. It might be a good thing in some ways. As long as it doesn't smell as bad as Kendo.

I always pictured Kendo just like in the movies with these huge cuts and slashes. To my disbelief they have only have 3 cuts (swings) in Kendo, that I’m aware of. Hmm, so much for surprise. Not that I should talk, I’d run as soon as someone started slashing.
After seeing each of the cuts I kept thinking wow, these small little movements are kind of boring. You can’t even tell if someone cut the wrist for the point or not. Too bad it wasn’t live blades, at least it would be more exciting. I contemplated going up to someones sword when there weren't looking and putting a metal tip on it.
It was so boring and I had to watch it for 3 hours. I realized at that point I should have chosen a more interesting sport to watch like golf. By the way, to the people who find golf interesting, I'm not even sure that counts as a sport. You don't even break a sweat.
I started to fall asleep and the teacher said, "Let's go, I've had enough of this". You could say that I again. I had enough of it  times 100! Once we exited the building I inhaled fresh air, it was nice, until we got to his old truck and the smell of gasoline and smoke made me sick again.

Sometimes you can't win!

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Other funny stories from this blog 
http://memoirsgaijin.blogspot.ca/

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