Live at the Budokan

Met up with the club from Sompo Japan this morning at Nippon Budokan. The picture above is of the pre-competition warm-up. An panorama taken with my trusty mobile phone. The comp was the 全日本実業団剣道大会 (All Japan Corporate Kendo Championships). Sompo Japan's team has been strong in the past but its members have been redistributed around the country over the past couple of years so they rarely train together as a complete unit, and some of the team members have not trained since being relocated. Both teams fielded were knocked out in the first round, the first in daihyo-sen and the second two wins to one.

I've uploaded a video of the same warm-up as the above panorama. Unfortunately the quality of the video in my camera isn't all that good. You should get some idea of the mass of activity that was happening on the floor. There were 288 teams of six (including the sub) at the comp, so there may have been in excess of a thousand people practicing. Being there it seemed like a lot anyway. Turn it up loud.
Access the video from the following link

http://ia300140.us.archive.org/3/items/Kendo/050919_083702.AMC
(You'll need Quicktime or another media player that supports AMC media)

Duck and cover

And here's a brief public service announcement to help you sleep at night.

http://www.archive.org/stream/DuckandC1951/DuckandC1951_256kb.mp4