The goodies

Special tricks you can only find on the Kyudo Kai web site and nowhere else !

Traveling with the bow, by Charles-Antoine

You like your bow, and you like traveling ... how to be sure your bow does not suffer from this ?

As everybody knows, the Japanese bow is asymetrical, and his curvature when unstringed is opposite to the one when stringed. It is very solid when curved the same direction than when putting the string, but delicate in the opposite direction.

In the bus, train, metro it may be better to keep the string on, so that the bow is shorter and stronger.

As it is a bit long to go to Japan by boat, you may choose to fly there, and for a few years you can not take your bow anymore in the cabin. If traveling with other kyudoka, it may be good to wrap several bows together, to make them stronger, and eventually to share the flight overprice if any (bows are more than 2m long, and maybe subject to special taxes). If traveling alone, and specially with a bamboo bow, you can purchase or create some special bamboo renforcements that you wrap to the extremities of the bow to make it stonger, and you wrap it into several layers of plastic-buble sheets. Another method is to build a box in which to place one or two bows, and eventually some arrows or find some other appropriate containers but be careful to the weight.

Traveling with the bow, by Pierre

Here below some photos to explain bow packing for airplane transportation. First the fragile extremities of the bow are protected, wrapped with pieces of bamboo (found in Japan). The bow is then wrapped in his cloth and inserted into a pastic tube to improve resistance to crunching. The bow and arrow holder are wrapped together and wrapped into a double-layer plastic bubble paper. The extremities are again closed by smaller sheet of double-layer plastic bubble paper.

Protection of extremities (1)	Protection of extremities (2)	The bow on top of the tube	Detail of the plastic tube
The bow into its tube	Bow and arrow holder	Wrapped bow w/o extremities	Final assembly

Anzan no omamori

Yes, Japanese have humour too !

It is the name of a good fortune toy, made with a broken string, string which broke during a successful shooting where the arrow hit the mato.

anzan      no     omamori: good fortune for pregnant woman

 安産         の         お守り

 atari        zuru              :the string that hit successfully ! (well, not only the string there ;-) )

中り         弦

Yes, it exists, here are the photos:

In Japan, the art is in wrapping the gift !	The red extremity of the string is hidden !
To be given to a pregnant woman, and to be kept not that far during delivery so that protecting kamis can do their job ! The only gris-gris recommanded by the Kyudo Kai doctors	Japanese version of the charm name