Oh yes, this is the time this autumn that I can finally start relaxing a little more. I attended the national kendo championships on the weekend spanning the 13th. to the 15th of November. I've pretty much spent most of my autumn preparing for this event, spent too much effort it seems like.

I would like to brag that I took it all home, but it turns out that I am not quite that good yet.

In the individuals competition I didn't get past the preliminaries. Of my two matches there I lost one 0-2 and the over one I won 2-1... that one point I gave away in the second match sealed my fate, but when my challenger turned out to be atleast nidan (second degree black belt) I shoulden't feel too bad about it.
I did my part, my points were sealed with a relatively clean men-strike. The big one of interest was my first point. With my size I tend to use hiki-strikes whenever I can (beer bellies have to work for something!), in this case it turned into hwta I might call an ok hiki/nuki do-strike. My astonishement came when a fifth-dan came over to me afterwards and actually commented it was a beautiful strike... that single comment, that meant something to me

However... my championships didn't end with just that. The main event to be proud of was that my team succeeded in bringing home the bronce medal for the team championships. Hurrah to us!

A long weekend was coming to a close yesterday, when I decided to go for grading. Adding 2.Kyu to my repertoar isn't too bad either.

Well, that's that. Finally I can get back to focusing more on photography... don't you agree?

I'll be looking into some new equipment towards christmas, more on that later.

OJJ