News:

English-language friendly kendama forum open for everyone worldwide. Welcome!

Main Menu

Hyper Japan - JKA having a stall. Work shops, grading exams, fun games, etc, etc

Started by Craftybuddy, 06 June, 2013, 23:19:52

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

BKA

We had a nice email from Yuka, a 14-year old player who is coming over for this event. She's looking forwards to seeing London, meeting you guys and spreading the word.

Edit: Her blog is at http://kendama-gal.blogspot.jp/

Kendamagal

Hello everyone, I'm Yuka (29 year old, wish I was 14 haha). Thank you so much for the post and sharing my blog here! I just want to tell you that I'm very excited to come to London and meet you guys at Hyper Japan!! I'll see you soon!!!

BKA

Oops, How on earth did we manage to read "14" by mistake, ha, sorry! But welcome to the forum.

LarsVegas

And I already was wondering how a 14-year old was traveling all over the world, seemingly all alone :)

See you in London.

(soo excited, nervous, and unsure whether to achieve pre-dan will be possible)
EKO 2012 - European Beginner Champion

The Void

You can do it Lars!

Relax, breathe, stay calm, breathe, relax... kendama!
If you don't want to BUY MY BOOKS 😉, then why not ask your local library to order them in, and read them for free? That would help too. Cheers!

SamB

I somehow have manged to get a free ticket so I will definitely be there now! I am somewhat out of practice but I'm still gonna have a crack at grading (and maybe buy some kendamas...). See you Saturday!
BKO 2011 - 2nd, SRC 2011 - 2nd,  SRC 2012 - 2nd, EJC 2012 (unicorns) - 2nd, SRC 2013 - 2nd, BKO 2013 - 3rd - Always the bridesmaid...

kendamajohnny

We both had a lot of fun at the event!
It was nice meeting all the people there; hope everyone going enjoys the next two days :)

Craftybuddy

It was wonderful opening day and we had kendamajohnny and matt joining - thank you for coming!!

LarsVegas

I'm back in Heathrow and I'm totally exhausted. What can I say? I didn't see much of the exhibition except the JKA stall. Fortunately most of the exhibition passed the stall: Ninja warriors, geishas, furry creatures, Victorian dolls, cyberpunks, and lots of normal people. Sometimes the noise was deafening (Japanese ghost drummers), but it just added to the atmosphere. I had some delicious food for lunch.

And the people at the JKA stall were more than friendly. When I showed up, I was directly asked whether I wanted to try Kendama. Upon revealing my JKA t-shirt (thanks to the forum), Yoko ([user]CraftyBuddy[/user]) came to me, knew who I was and introduced me to Takeshi Nakanishi, Yuka Hyuga ([user]kendamagal[/user]), and Manami Okazaki (all of JKA). She offered me to store my bag behind the counter and generally invited me to join the crew. And so did I. I talked to people, invited them to play, and clicked some nice tricks with the staff. It was so nice to get people to try Kendama, show them the basic moves and watch them succeed (with the easier tricks). And everybody responded well - there was nobody turning just away. They just got caught be the good mood at the stall. Wesley and Vi from the Netherlands joined later as did [user]SamB[/user]. I saw a lot of crazy stuff and had just a great time.

Thanks to everybody at the stall for a wonderful day. It was worth every minute to get up at 04:00 in the morning and coming back at 23:30 for just one day in London (in Earl's Court to be exact, didn't see anything else), including all the stress of air traveling. I really hope to see you again.

...

Back in Frankfurt (where I had to change planes), I went through security and only that time they asked me to open my bag. It was fun to see the guys discuss the shape of the Kendamas on the screen (I was already through the gate and could watch them from the end of the line). When the guard asked me over, I directly told him that I had Japanese toys. He even knew what to do with them and made me unpack every single one. But it was in good mood and he let me go quite quickly.

Good night everybody, have a great last day at the stall tomorrow
EKO 2012 - European Beginner Champion

SamB

I had a super fun time. Really geat to meet new players and throw kendamas into the hands of literally hundreds of British (!) people. Hopefully we will have some new players round these parts after this. It was super fun, super hot, there was plenty of other crazy stuff around, just a shame I was only there for one afternoon!
Huge thanks to Yoko for the fun day and to Takeshi for upgrading me to 4th Dan!!!
BKO 2011 - 2nd, SRC 2011 - 2nd,  SRC 2012 - 2nd, EJC 2012 (unicorns) - 2nd, SRC 2013 - 2nd, BKO 2013 - 3rd - Always the bridesmaid...