Kendo and Japanese Culture

If you express interest in someone's hobby or culture, they will move a mountain to help you learn or experience it, especially the Japanese people, who are endlessly kind and generous to me. 

While anxiously waiting outside the meeting room to introduce myself to the town council, the head honchos who make the decisions and budgets and such, a man who was waiting outside for the next meeting approached my supervisor and me. A kendo master, he offered to teach me and my husband kendo. He saw my husband and I running several kilometers to a nearby park, which we wanted to see but didn't have car insurance yet. And my supervisor has begun to put the wheels in motion. I have given her a list of cultural things I would like to try: calligraphy, kendo, taiko, visiting a rice paddy, dairy farm, or fishing boat (main industries in my area), etc., and she is making everything happen. 

On Tuesday, my husband and I observed our first kendo practice. The participants were children ranging from 7-14 years old. All of them know me from school. The teachers were the man I met at the town office and his 74-year-old father, the most energetic and genki old man I have ever met, and I have met some very genki old men! Here is a video:

A member of the town English Circle was there, as she has two sons in kendo. She worked hard, with her limited English and our limited Japanese, to explain the rules and spirit, because we were very much in the dark. At the English Circle this week, she had made a copy of a few pages of an English textbook she had at home that describes kendo in great detail. To me, the process of learning absent the Internet, is a very organic and natural feeling. I could probably teach myself some kendo from watching YouTube videos, and I could probably get a Master's degree online, but there is something that just feels right about learning about kendo by observing and having it explained by friends and colleagues.

The kendo instructors said that my husband and I are welcome to observe anytime, but I will need to talk to my supervisor if I wish to take the next steps to join. I imagine that lessons and the whole get-up could be quite expensive.

Here are some bonus pictures from the Yakumo Matsuri Festival:

 My junior high school students' orchestra:

The elementary school brass band: