Dojo News: Nanseikan Kendo Club

Shochugeiko will take place on Saturday 16 December from 9am to 5pm. Cost is $10 for Nanseikan members, $20 for VKR/AKR members. Snacks provided but BYO lunch. This year we will have a special guest Ekai Korematsu osho. Ekai osho is a Soto Zen priest and Abbot of Jikishoan Zen Buddhist Community in Melbourne  www.jikishoan.org.au . He is very familiar with Kendo having been involved in teaching Zen to some Hanshi 8-dans when he lived in Kumamoto. If you have a meditation cushion (like a zafu ) or stool, please bring it. Otherwise a firm cushion is fine. Ekai-osho's mini-workshop will start at 9.30am, after zokin and rei. WKC t-shirts and tenugui have arrived! The fund-raising tshirts and tenugui for the the Aussie team going to the WKCs next year have arrived, so we'll hand them out tomorrow to all those who ordered them. They look really good. Arpad Maksay sensei Kendo 6 dan Congratulations to Maksay sensei for passing his 6th dan exam on the first attempt! There w

Club zekken (also called nafuda) are required for all members who wear bogu. If you don't have one, you should order yours asap. They are made to order in Japan by Zen Sankei and are a once-off cost. Zekken pretty much last forever and you can easily transfer them from one set of bogu to another. The only exception is if you need a smaller size for children's bogu. In that case I would order a medium sized one. Otherwise for adults, order the large size. Here is the link: http://www.zen-sankei.com/onlineshop/product_info.php?cPath=21_66&products_id=347 When entering your name, please type first name in sentence case, surname in all caps, e.g. "Jane SMITH" This is to avoid mistakes at the Japan end where family names come first and there can be confusion occasionally about which is which.  This zekken design is required by the AKR for all competitions. If you don't have one like this, you can't compete. And you don't want to be orderin