Just got back from Kendo not too long ago. It's freaking amazing. My friend and I made a pact to join the Kendo Club next year, haha. It's that good.
It was really intense at the start, though. Felt like I accidentally joined into boot camp or something. Haha. All the row arrangements and stuff. What's funnier was my friend said that it felt more like a cult group(There's this part where the seniors demonstrated the moves. One, the "leader", began counting 1-10 in Japanese and the rest chimed in. So we had a big group of people, standing in a circle, chanting in a foreign tongue).
It's so steep in tradition too. Even though it's just a gymnasium, we had to bow both when entering and leaving the place. Most of the commands are in Japanese, it's damn cool. Hoping to grasp them as soon as possible. Learned basic footwork for the first half of the class. It's kinda hard coz We had to go bare-feet and it was quite cold. I got cramp twice in one of my feet twice when doing the "rei", a word to describe kneeling down and bowing. Good thing that it was nothing serious, hahaha.
Did play with the sword too! Haha. Though there are only 2 ways to hold it. It's a sign of respect. It's not as heavy as I anticipated, but enough to feel the tension while bringing it up and down, and back and forth. The whole session was pretty much about incorporating the movements (back+forth) and the proper way of holding the sword. Did a little of hitting the target "men" (head). We had to shout the word while doing so. Hahaha.
Man, can't wait for the next class!