Kendo Bogu

I have written about bogu before in this blog, but I was prompted to think about it again after getting involved in a thread on the “Kendo Business Professionals” forum on Linkedin. A kendoka started the debate by asking for advice on inserting hard protection into kote to limit injury. Some people including me, made [...]

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Travelling for Kendo

As I may have mentioned in previous posts, like many kendoka, I am a member of the Kendo Professionals group on Linkedin. I recently started a thread about kendo travel and received an interesting question from Emilio Blas of Milwaukee about the best way of transporting kendo equipment. In these days of Airline cuts it [...]

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Fancy Dou

I have always been fascinated by the variety of doudai available and have spent hours in Japanese bogu shops staring at the selection. For some reason the more outlandish models are kept on the top shelf, (rather like magazines in the newspaper shop). I have seen dou covered in deerskin, wild boar skin and even [...]

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Hotaru Bogu

An old kendo friend, Tashiro sensei, is currently in the UK on a business visit. Tashiro sensei is one of the few non-professional kendoka to have passed 8th dan at the first attempt. He runs a bogu business in Saga-ken called Tenpudo and is in Europe to introduce a new range of bogu called Hotaru [...]

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