[Kaoru3]

Hello!

Originally Posted by Jaydelart

Yes, like Tenchu said, kendo, these days, is a sport.

It is both a MA and a sport, but mainly an MA.

It is a combat sport, less practical in the use of actual swords, but still valuable in certain aspects, as a martial art.

We don't use real swords in kendo. And, you cannot use a real sword in any situation unless you want to do jail time. So, neither are practical. Kendo is useful for developing one's character, though, and that is one of the purposes of studying kendo.

Kendo is weapon-based, so it can't really be compared to Karate.
Hand-to-hand combat is very different from weapon-to-weapon combat.

This is correct. Having studied TKD, I can say this is very true.

You'll mainly be using shinai,

Actually, one uses only shinai in ji-geiko(sparring) and regular kihon(basics) practice. Our kendo kata is paired and is non-contact only. We use bokuto for that, which is a wooden sword. We never spar with bokuto. Too dangerous.

and will likely start wearing padded armor at some point along your training (maybe immediately, depending on the teaching method).

The armour isn't padded like TKD gear. You will get bruises on the wrists at times.

One never gets tossed into bogu(armour) immediately unless it is a McDojo.(fake school with a person who is not a recognised member of the All US Kendo Federation(AUSKF, a member of the AJKF.), or in other countries, the respective federation of that country that is a member of the All Japan Kendo Federation(AJKF) and IKF(International Kendo Federation) now known as FIK, which can be found on the AJKF website. If you visit that page, you can look up different countries to find federation info. If the country has no listing, it means no dojo has been established in most cases.) Teachers in these McDojos usually have had no legitimate training at all, and just made it up or tried to learn from books and videos and think they are trained and gave themselves rank. Or, they themselves learned from another McDojo teacher and have opened a new dojo teaching the McDojo stuff which is not the real thing.

There are lots of good warning signs of McDojos such as: No affiliation with an official kendo federation listed on the AJKF/FIK website, has made up their own federation, lots of patches on uniform, use of real swords besides shinai, use of a title such as grandmaster, soke, Doctor, or other inflated title, an excessively high rank(In kendo, outside of Japan, people at the 6-8 dan levels are few. 5th is not common either.), use of karate uniform, and the biggest sign? A colored belt. Kendo never issues belts for rank, and we don't grade every few months either. Also, excessive cost to attend. Sensei don't get paid. It can be any combination of these things.

In legitimate kendo, it takes anywhere from 3 months to a year before one is allowed to wear bogu, depending on the dojo and the sensei's policy. One must develop decent basics first before being allowed to spar.

Kaoru