Swordfighting in Indonesia

[rawnshah]

Thanks to our new member, Christopher Arendt, I found a japanese sword school in Indonesia. It's not that I'm going there but you might. The real point is that they have it available. In the US, we may sigh about the fact that we do not have a sword class near us, but think about how much harder it is in other countries where there may not be as much influence from Japanese culture as we do in the US.

I myself lived in Southeast Asia for many years and while we had the more common martial arts like karate and aikido, finding a sword class was next to impossible. My karate sensei, Yoshinobu Nonaka sensei, at that time did have some iai training but he was not willing to train us on that because it was outside his area. Seeing his Iai demo at the Brunei national championship may have been one of my early inspirations (about 20 years ago).

If you have a chance to learn it from an early age and it holds your interest, I suggest take advantage of it as much as you can. I didn't find an instructor until I met Shihan McGraugh about 8-9 years ago, so I really didn't start until I was older. Perhaps its just me, but as I go later into my 30s, I don't get tired as quickly, but the aching lasts longer. Or it could be that I'm just trying much harder stuff. I really do wish I'd started learning at least 10 years before when I did start.