I confess that I have few regrets for skipping out on the shiai this past weekend, other than of course missing one of the few Sundays still left to me. Of course, the main reason for liking shiai is because you win. Perhaps the converse/inverse isn’t also true, but for me the main issue is the in most cases the mitori-geiko is not very good (with exceptions for kodansha matches, but only live), and there is just a whole lot of cooldowntime, and I feel like I get more out of regular keiko.

It is true, however, that I do need to think about accumulating more shinpan experience, as it’s kind of inexcusable that somehow two years in I’m still at zero.

I suppose the other contrast with iaido is that there is no “shiai-iai” at least that I can think of at this early stage in the game.

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