The other day I got myself new duds for kendo practice. The First is a jacket or “Keigoki” that is made of a real thick fabric and the second piece of clothing is the pants called “hakama”. There are rules and procedures to putting this clothing on:

For the Keigoki, you must put it on and tie the strings in a bow. The bow must face horizontally.

For the Hakama, you must first wrap the forward straps around your waist 1 1/2 times and then tie it in a bow behind your back. Then you must put this doggle from behind into your back strap and then tie the back straps forward in a square knot.

This is the way of the clothes. I feel that as I put it on, I feel focused and charged about doing kendo. Like when a president of some big company puts on a red “power” tie. It’s cool, it looks cool, and feels great.

About the color… most all kendo outfits are indiglo. There really is no distinguishing marks between levels (Kyu) and Ranks (Dan). The ranks and level are better explained in the wikipedia version of Kendo (google “kendo”).

So here you go, Samurai Josh!

What’s coming next is a “tare” or short name skirt that goes in front on the hakama. The Tare is usually personalized with peoples names in Kanji. My friend Nic’s last name is Stone or Ishi which translates ok, but Wheeler translates to “multiple wheels” or something with car and tires. So I picked my own kanji… “Akaryuu” or “Red Dragon” plus the school name and my last name in Katakana. here’s what it’ll look like:

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