Nanseikan Kendo Club 剣道クラブ南西館

Michi Martial Arts is our most local equipment supplier, run by Junko Nomura who is a senior member at Kenshikan. The new website has lots of new products, as well as a proper shopping cart and credit card payment, making it much easier to order. Junko sources all her products through reputable suppliers in Japan, and being a kenshi herself, only chooses the best value and most useful products. No more Facebook I've never been a big fan of Facebook, and since migrating my personal account over to a group page, I've experienced ever more frustrations with its lack of functionality. The Cambridge Analytica scandal has been for me the last straw (and is probably only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the kind of privacy abuses FB is guilty of). So in the spirit of #deletefacebook, I've decided to stop using the platform altogether. I won't actually delete the page, but it will become dormant. It will be a static page advertising our training times and location bu...

...only for subscribers to this site! No FB or SMS! 7.30 to 9pm as usual.

This year's Kangeiko will be held at the Eastwood Leisure Complex in Ballarat. The date is Saturday 23 June. At this stage the plan is to meet at Southern Cross Station to catch the 7.16am train. The train arrives at Ballarat station at 8.40am and from there it is a 5-10 min walk to the venue. We will finish training at 4pm. At around 5pm we will head to Asahi Japanese Restaurant for an early dinner (5.30 start). We will catch the 7.13pm train back to Melbourne. The train is scheduled to arrive at Southern Cross at 8.40pm. The train can be paid for using a standard Myki. The adult fare deduction will be $15.12 one way. Concession is $7.56 one way. The cost of the training will be by donation. All food, drink and snacks will be BYO. More details soon.

The results of the two March gradings reflected the difficulty of the gradings themselves. Of all the Nanseikan members who graded this March, all but one passed! Congratulations! The one who didn't pass was the person who was going for the highest grade. As you go up through the ranks, what you are asked to do for each grading doesn't change, but the quality of how you do it must. It is more and more likely that you will fail the higher you go, right up to 8-dan where your chances of failing are consistently >99%. To Chie who did not pass her 3-dan grading, I offer commiserations and encouragement. Unlike in Western culture where failure is often seen as an indication to try a different path ("stop flogging a dead horse") in Kendo, the only failure is giving up altogether. Failure can be painful, but it is also an excellent teaching tool and we should embrace it, not run away from it. When you fail your grading. What to do next. End of B...