On the 3rd of April 2009, Motoaki Sumi, Tereza Vokata, Satoshi Komatsuzaki, Neill Innes, Koji Ozawa and John Hsu of Edinburgh University Kendo Club made the long trip down to Canterbury to compete in the all-Britain University Championships. It was a good start to the day when Sumi realised he had forgotten his railcard. So after a short sprint home, we were good to go. We decided to take the megabus down to London to save some money. Whilst it may have been the cheapest option, the bus was far from comfortable or fun…
Joining us until Newcastle was a band of football hooligans who proceeded to get wasted and shout as much as possible for their entire trip. After their fortunate departure at Newcastle, their place was taken by a Buddhist monk and then by a baby who had a major accident on the way to London, much to Neill and Tereza’s dislike.
We arrived in London at 8pm in the evening and made a quick jump on the train for Canterbury. On the train, John taught us a murder/detective card-game which only made us further realise how untrustworthy Sumi is! We arrived in Canterbury at 11pm and found our youth hostel for the night where we promptly got to sleep.

We found our way to the University of Kent sports centre the next morning where we got ourselves registered for the day. After a quick warm-up as a team, things kicked off at 10am with a welcome speech and the men’s kyu competition. Koji made a good start to the day with 2 Men cuts, getting him into the 2nd round. Unfortunately he was put out by the eventual winner of the kyu competition. Next was the ladies competition: Tereza fought very well in all her fights and came out in 1st place, winning her final fight with a fantastic Dou cut. In the men’s dan competition, Neill fought hard but unfortunately didn’t get through his starting pool, losing to Anthony Griffiths of UCL. John managed to get through to the semi-finals but was put out during a heated encho (extra time). Sumi and Satoshi ended up facing each other in the semi-finals. Sumi didn’t have enough money to coax Satoshi into dropping the match, so Satoshi beat Sumi and advanced to the finals. Satoshi was against Alex Heyworth from UCL and managed to win the competition with a debana Kote. One more gold medal for Edinburgh and Sumi also won a bronze medal for coming 3rd. The judges weren’t sure what Satoshi’s surname was: the now legendary Alan Thompson thought it was ‘Komatsuya’!

Finally was the team competition and our first opponents were Kent University. Neill fought first as Senpo and made a great start by ending his match fairly quickly with a Men and Kote. Koji carried on well winning his match with a Men cut. Satoshi and Tereza both won their matches 2-0. Sumi was against the Taisho, Lee Dale. Dale scored Men, but Sumi levelled the playing field with a Kote of his own. 4 wins and 1 draw allowed us to carry on to the next round against Imperial College of London.
Neill’s fight was slightly harder than his first one but he persisted and came through with a Men cut towards the end of the match. Koji’s fight was slightly confusing: the judges gave him a point since his opponent had commited 2 hansoku (fouls), thus winning him his match. Satoshi comfortably won his match and Tereza drew 0-0 with her opponent. Sumi managed to score 2 points on the Imperial Taisho, thus winning his match and the round for the team. We were through to the finals and our opponents were to be the Cambridge University.
Neill and Koji unfortunately lost their matches making us realise that this would be a tough one to win back. Satoshi managed to win his fight and poor Tereza almost won 1-0 but her opponent, Daisy Chen, scored Kote in the last second. As it stood, Cambridge were winning 2-1 with one fight to go. Sumi admirably fought Satoshi Yamazaki and scored a Kote cut but Yamazaki pulled through and scored a point of his own. Cambridge were very good opponents and deservedly took the gold but we proudly accepted our silver medals to the applause of the other clubs.
The day couldn’t have gone better: 2 golds, 5 silvers and a bronze medal is a fantastic result for the team and for the club.

In the evening, our hosts very kindly took us out for quite possibly the biggest Chinese meal we had ever had: there was literally about 15 huge dishes between the 5 of us!
The next day we decided to do some sight-seeing around Canterbury. During the day we saw the lovely Canterbury Cathedral and spent a good hour there exploring the grounds and listening to an angry donkey! We also went on pleasant boat-trip around the town before taking a cultured trip to pizza hut for lunch! Soon after lunch we headed for the train station preparing ourselves for the long return trip ahead.

All in all it was a fantastic weekend and the team did themselves and EUKC proud. We have offered to host the competition next year, so we best be ready to win the gold.