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Kendo and Ramen

Today I went down to Lit­tle Tokyo to grab some ramen for lunch, and hap­pened upon the Cherry Blos­som Fes­ti­val. I only stayed a lit­tle while, to see some sumo and kendo per­for­mances.

I got there late for the sumo un­for­tu­nately, but I did get to see a few matches where Dan Kalbfleisch wiped the floor with some other guys.

The kendo demon­stra­tion started with sen­sei Cary Yoshio Mi­zobe per­form­ing tameshi­giri—cut­ting a tatami omote with a katana. His stu­dents went on from there to show off their moves with shi­nai. Sen­sei Mi­zobe was ex­plain­ing one of the moves: tsuki, a stab to the throat ap­par­ently dif­fi­cult enough that he only lets his black belt stu­dents per­form it, to lessen the risk of not hav­ing enough pre­ci­sion and in­jur­ing the op­po­nents. He said he was hired to train Brit­tany Mur­phy to per­form it for her new movie, The Ramen Girl. The only prob­lem is, they wanted him to train her on this ad­vanced move in eight hours. His only ad­vice was to to­tally fake it out with cam­era tricks, or risk in­jury. Thought that was funny :)

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