Tameshigiri

Tameshigiri

The evening before my departure he invited me to his house for dinner and some test-cutting (tameshigiri) on bamboo. He pick a few different sizes, from about 2 inches to 5-6 inches wide. His shinken was nice and well balanced, thick blade but not awkward at all. Quite comfortable actually. It was my first time cutting bamboo and it was great! My first victim was the 2 inch "twig" that I took care of very easily, we then moved to more beefy stuff. The challenge in test cutting is to cut with the same angle as the blade. Sounds easy, but very challenging; the blade doesn't go straight unless you make it go straight. So easy to use too much right hand and the blade ends up curving and getting stuck in the the fibrous bamboo. Was a great experience. More on this later.