[G8whlTAe]

yeah I think that is the key point, Oroshi. Kendo is not as flashy and glamorous as people think it is by watching Kill Bill and stuff like that. I was watching the Eiga - one single strike World Championship bit with the really long overtime in the final match with my better half and all I got to hear was "man this is boring, nothing is happening".

Cause when I say "Japanese Swordfighting" they immediatly think of Kill Bill and the likes but when I say then that those movies are fake and have nothing to do with real kendo, people get dissapointed and lose interest. I guess for a non-kendoka Kendo is just really boring. For us every match is exciting to watch. We see so much more. Footwork, Zanchin, kikentai ichi all those things. I mean I'm glued to the screen with every match I watch, and I watch it over and over again so I don't miss any details but that's because I do Kendo and I know all the many difficult things that are part of it.

For a regular viewer, all they notice is the occasional men strike, and then they wonder why it hasn't a scored point.

I guess, astetically, for the general public, big flashy blade dances like in Kill Bill are simply more exciting. Once you dive into the philosophy of what Kendo actually is, you lose the attention of a lot of people so even documentary makers generally don't bother. My Sensei and two of his best students were on a dutch TV show last summer to sort of show what Kendo was and eventhough I thought they did a very good job, I heard from non-Martial Artists who had watched it, that they still thought it was very confusing and very different to what they had imagined "japanese swordfighting" to be like.

In a way, I'm kind of happy that it's so detached from the general public, because it sort of weeds out those wanna be ninja kids who want to just learn how to be a samurai so they can smack each other on the heads with shinai in the back yard. On the other hand, before I started Karate and didn't know much about Martial Arts in general, I didn't even know Kendo existed, eventhough I grew up with Samurai stories. Just somehow I never came across Kendo being mentioned anyone while growing up which is a shame because it makes me so happy now and I wish I could have started much, much earlier.

I think the best thing is to organize open days at local dojos and advertise in other MA schools or like our local Iaido dojo, hang up posters at the local chinese restaurant xD It worked cause it got my attention