The Panda Travels: 50th Post! Kendo, Manga, and More! (1/27/12)

Hey oh y’all,

Guess what! It’s my 50^th Blog Post!

That means something special! Yay me!

-hey David, you are supposed to be thanking everyone for reading through 25 pages of your nonsense.

But there are 50…oh…I get it…

-Yup! You can do math! Yay! ;p
Remember, people loves pandas, but people don’t like your bad grammar!

Yeah. Ok. Thanks Sumi…

Anyways, this is my 50^th blog post so as thanks to you all for sticking through up till now, I’ve added a couple of things to this week’s post!

First, a video and blog post, courtesy of Daniel Liem. Please check out this link:

http://danielcliem.tumblr.com/post/41603992910/a-closer-look-at-the-fierceness-of-the-kyoto

But first, a little back story about the video.

On Friday, we went to the police station to watch kendo (Japanese “fencing,” literally “way of the sword”) practice! Kendo is the “sport/martial art” in which the kendoka (person of kendo) suits up in armor and wields a bamboo shinai (sword). Like many Japanese martial arts (karate-do, judo, aikido, etc.), kendo stems from samurai era and keeps alive the traditional spirit of Japan. This “sport” is not about competing but rather about respect, discipline, and self-improvement.

In kendo, one of the target points is a flat strike against the helmet.

Then today, Jacob and I were able to come back and actually learn kendo. Of course, since we know absolutely nothing about kendo, we are just starting with the basics – how to treat the dojo, how to bow to sensei, how to stand at attention, how to sit seiza (lit. “proper sitting,” which is kneeling on a hardwood floor…and you do a lot of it), how to walk etc.

That is seiza. Yowza!

Believe it or not, just standing and taking steps forward from a kendo stance is really hard – you take a narrow upright stance, legs only about a few fists length apart, right foot forward…the kicker is that you slightly forward on the balls of your feet, which essentially means tip toe as you move around. Given that your stance is much narrower than western athletic stances, you are much less stable, causing a nice sharp pain in your left calf muscle every time you slightly sway, which happens a lot.

Kendo shiyou! Let's do kendo!

Basically we are nowhere near being able to even hold the sword, much less swing it around. Still, learning the proper etiquette and kendo mindset makes for a very cool philosophy.

But my words hardly capture the spirit (not to mention the noise) of the kendo dojo.

So as part of my special – instead of having to look at me hurt myself sitting in seiza for a long time, you can enjoy a video of the real practice (thank you Daniel Liem!). He does a really good job on his blog, so you should definitely check it out. I think you can understand how we felt as we heard the slamming of the sword and the kiai (loosely spirit yell). I think he says it best:

“check out this legit scary Kendo Kenjutsu [original name of kendo] training by the Japanese Police Force, gave me chills:”

http://danielcliem.tumblr.com/post/41603992910/a-closer-look-at-the-fierceness-of-the-kyoto

On a sidenote – kendo is yet another instance of what is David, a left-handed kid, supposed to do here – in kendo you always stand with your right foot forward and with the right hand controlling the sword. This is completely opposite of western-style fencing for left handed people. Thus, a slight problem.

Then also on Friday, we visited a street fair at Kitanotenmangu Shrine. Even those who dislike logic like myself understand the general law of Japanese street fairs: street fair = street food, street food = taiyaki, taiyaki = pancake filled with custard or red bean, pancake filled with custard or read bean = onaka ippai, onaka ippai = happy (or more accurately I’m full, but still same thing really).

David likes taiyaki. A lot.

And after, we went to the manga museum! Basically a huge manga library! Yeah! And we "had" to go there for school? Even better!

A manga...museum?

Unfortunately, they don’t allow photography in the museum due to copyright laws and whatnot, so as another part of my special, I will be using a manga photo app – called Otaku Camera…it basically…well, just take a look neh?

I may explain more about manga in another post, but just in case you were curious – my favorite 2 mangas are Fullmetal Alchemist and Ouran High School Host Club.

To those who know me, you may wonder as two titles which seemingly should have made the list conspicuously did not – Pokémon and Shirokuma Café – for those playing trivia at home, this is because the Pokémon manga (which does exist) does not follow the show and Shirokuma Café has yet to be translated into English

Ah, but you probably don’t really care about what I like…you probably are more interested in my last special segment - “What Pandas Like!”

Pandas like giant robots.