[Senasivar]

I wish I had a chance to get in on the last thread. I actually went along with this and went after a girl I met in kendo.

Frankly put, while I don't think that it's personally any different than meeting anyone anywhere else, there's a lot of complexity to the issue. Her parents were kendoka, with her dad a very serious yudansha at my old dojo (this was a few years ago, when I was still in high school). He received me pretty well for the father of a teenage girl, but in keiko he always seemed to be testing me. I felt a serious need to always go above and beyond in keiko to show him I was effectively "good enough" for his daughter. He appreciated it, but in terms of kendo, I think the motivation wasn't the right kind.

The worst was when we had to keiko together. We were about the same rank (yon-kyu) at the time, so we had a lot of jigeiko with each other. Frankly, it's really awkward: you look at this girl you're with, and can't bring yourself to attack or do anything. It really comes down to a tsuba-zeriai nothing-fest where both of you just kind of rest until you start fighting others.

In the end, like so many youthful indulgences of that period, it kind of fell on its face. Kendo wasn't really a huge detrimental factor, but it certainly got weird when we had to compete against each other.

Be careful with what you get into on this one.