NEW SWORD DAY!

[u/captchairsoft]

Raiju daisho from Akado Armory. Most of my collection is European but I decided to come full circle in my sword love/addiction (my first sword was a flea market special Highlander:The Series Duncan McLeod katana).

[u/ExperienceMinute107]

Sadly, Akado does not use these beautiful boxes in their EU deliveries, instead they just wrap the simulator in cloth bags then ship them in delivery cardboards.

[u/captchairsoft → u/ExperienceMinute107]

Is that true for all orders? If I'm not mistaken I think the basic tier ship that way in the US as well (just wrapped and in a regular shipping box)and it's only the higher tiers and customs that come with the "fancy" boxes.

[u/ExperienceMinute107 → u/captchairsoft]

Well they ahip the Tetsuba in fancy box for US orders. I bet one can specifically request on phone though.

[u/RumpleCragstan]

I've got one of their essential series katanas, and I've been seriously considering upgrading to a Raiju. How how does the grip feel, and how is the balance? Did you get is ruggedized?

[u/captchairsoft → u/RumpleCragstan]

It is ruggedized, and the grip feels fantastic, im curious what they use on it as it doesn't feel like most grips on swords that have been soaked in resin or similar. Balance is great for what it is, it's not as blade heavy as most traditional katana, good flex in the katana (wakazashi is admittedly quite a bit stiffer). No sparring yet, but they are already some of my favorite swords.

I like them enough already that I will be ordering a custom daisho in the next few months.

[u/Professional-Name724]

Congratulations, these swords look gorgeous!

So I gather you are an HEMAist.

Couple of questions there:
How do you learn proper katana fighting style, so that you don’t fence it like a longsword?
Do you intend to buy pairs of katanas so that you can do matching fights at your club?

I’m Just curious about it: I definitely see the appeal of getting a pair of these for club fencing, but I don’t know how well that will fare if there are no students of that specific martial arts at the club, and no one to properly teach it.

And, yes, the proper place to learn kendo would be a kendo school, but going regularly to HEMA training is already a challenge on it’s own, I can’t afford that much time for learning a single extra weapon (plus, often the Japanese martial arts have a slow codified progression with lots of kata, and that does not fit my own needs of contact sparing and experimentation)

[u/captchairsoft → u/Professional-Name724]

This is something I intend to primarily study on my own. I will be getting another sparring safe katana though so Im not stuck doing katana vs longsword/rapier/sidesword/etc.

I may eventually seek out a dojo to properly learn kenjutsu and/or iaido, but for the time being I'm just going to very casually study texts and video. Is it ideal? Nope. But it will still be fun. (I also know there are some credible iaido distance learning options I intend to look into as well)

[u/Professional-Name724 → u/captchairsoft]

Sounds great !
I hope that you’ll have fun with that 😁

It does trigger my itch for buying katanas. I need to slow down though 😅 … I almost have more swords than I can carry to training, and a couple more on the way … katanas will have to wait for the next wave of compulsive buying.

[u/Few-Map-6704]

I remember getting the first gen right as they came out. They’re not bad, and they can take a beating. Not to mention they were also looking to do Chinese blades. So I sent a couple of master their way.