Shinai Epitaph

Today, I killed my first shinai. In the middle of practice, the nakayui suddenly tore.
Sensei lent me his replacement shinai (mine, of course, lay safely at home), so I could go on practicing. It was heavier than my own shinai, which took me a while to get used to (and which caused me to fail horrendously at the tsuki techniques).
The nakayui is one of the more easily replacable parts of the shinai - it's just a strip of leather holding the bamboo pieces together in the upper third - so it's a tolerable loss, but it's sort of a strange feeling to have killed the first shinai. [Well, technically, it was the second. But the first shinai I killed belonged to Jörg; at my very first attempt at kendô, I broke one of the bamboo spars on someone's helmet. That was, to fulfill my movie quoting quota, the beginning of a wonderful friendship.] Like some sort of baptisement. I'm no absolute beginner anymore - from now on, I'll be working with a repaired, self-assembled shinai.
Woot.
I might name it Andúril.


Also, QotD:

Roland (my sensei): Alright, now the advanced ones do ji-geiko* and those without armour have to satisfy, um, occupy themselves.

Interesting Freudian slip...

ji-geiko= free sparring

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( Abschiedsrede an mein Shinai )

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Memeage.

Stolen from _redpanda_.

1. Think of a word you would use to describe me.
2. Go to Google Image Search and search for that word.
3. Choose the most fitting pic and post it as a reply.
4. Post this meme in your journal.

And I'm taking over the fifth step added by _redpanda_:

5. If you followed 1. - 4., tell me it's there and (if I see) I'll come do it.