Chris K. Taylor

That’s it, if anything is missing I’m buying it in Japan; my bags are just within the weight alloted to me so I can’t fit anything else in them if I needed to. I think I have everything bar that one item I forgot (spare pair of glasses or some contacts - yes, I remembered) so I’m not too worried. The last few days have been so hectic that there has barely been time for me to get excited and tomorrow I’ll probably be too tired.
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Whenever a potential Iaido student visits the Dojo where I study, I always wonder just how much they have looked into the art. Despite their enthusiasm once they have seen what we do, I always feel that they are expecting us to be hurling ourselves at each other with swords clashing left right and centre. The same can be said when people have asked me what Iaido is, especially when you take the easy option of saying ‘it’s a Japanese sword art’. As we’ll be studying and demonstrating Iaido in Kyoto I thought it might be a good idea to try to explain what we do.
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I have more or less one week to go now and still no theme/template for this site. After toying with the idea of bodging something together and promptly deciding against it, I now have two options: use a template designed and offered for download by someone else or leave the default template in place.
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Today I’ve been running through everything I need to take with me to Kyoto. After realising that I had forgotten the power adaptors, voltage convertor and new bag for the laptop among other things (yes, pretty much all stuff for the laptop) I set out to the shops hit Google looking for the best prices. Three hours later and I’m done, I think.
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First of all, welcome to anyone who reads this. My name is Chris, I’m 31 and the rest will be added to an ‘About’ page soon enough.

So, why blog? I thought about starting up again about a year ago but I couldn’t think of a reason to start, now I can. On the 23rd April I will be flying to Japan to attend the DNBK 2008 World Butoku Sai in Kyoto where I will be studying and demonstrating Iaido, more about that later though. While I’m there I will, hopefully, be using this as a travel journal and will include photo’s whenever the opportunity arises.

The problem with writing, for myself anyway, is getting over the first few months and into a steady habit. With any luck the blogging I do on this trip will be enough of a trigger to keep me going.

So there we are, a good enough reason to start. Hopefully I’ll get hooked.

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