Photo Courtesy of A. Melton It's been a couple weeks since our dojo competed at the 20th (20th!) Annual Kent Taikai in Kent, WA, but the matches I had there and the lessons I learned continue to stay fresh in my mind. It was an awesome tournament experience, and even though I didn't place in anything this time around I feel like I had some of the best matches of my kendo life so far. Let's get into it! This taikai showed my return to shinpan duty. I missed Obukan this past summer and they only used 4 Dan and up for shinpan at PNKF. I did my best and received some good advice from the sensei floating around and my court judge. Overall I think I did a good job of "keeping the triangle" between the three of us, moving to position quickly and efficiently and always being aware, but I was told that I may be setting my bar a bit too high for ippon for some of the matches. This is one area that will just take more practice to really get a feel for. At the s
One man's Kendo journey