kenkakubanrai

Had the Spring Iai Festival Kenkakubanrai in Toritsudai today, and as always it was a blast. Tanaka-sensei and I had to demo cutting first, and by some miracle I managed to nail nukiuchi-mizugaeshi (rising diagonal cut from the draw, then horizontal cut through the target before it falls.) Tanaka-sensei did an impress horizontal cut through two targets with his new beefy cutter from Hataya.
After our demo Niina-gosoke and Yamada-sensei demo'd kusarigama, jutte and tessen, tanjo, and jo. Then the team competition started, and I was judging with Tanaka-san and Ando-sensei. Somehow my Shibuya team made it all the way to the finals (which I judged) but they got clobbered by the other team and came in second.
In the afternoon there were more demos; Tanaka-sensei and Miura-san did some cool ryukyu (old Okinawan) arts including bo, boat oar, and sai, and then the performance competition began.
The Toritsudai team pulled out all the stops with wacky costumes and music, not to be outdone by Yaesu's team madness, the crazy dancing antics of Ikebukuro, Suidobashi's short play, and of course Kiyokawa-kun and Otsuka-san doing there Giant Sword series, not to mention Kosei-kai's blindfolded cutting demo. In all it was total lunacy and I was laughing so hard it hurt.
After the festival we went down to street and took over a local bar for some much-needed food, drink, and trash talkin'.