Kendama – Unalaska From My Point of View

Well, he did it! He remembered to take care of the kitty litter and he earned himself a real Kendama. I was so afraid he was going to forget on the last day and be relegated to playing with his grandpa-made kendama forever! As he was leaving the house the other night, I told his mom not to let him take the homemade kendama to school in his backpack. Can you imagine what might have happened if all of his friends saw it? While adults might think of it as an ingenious solution, I don’t think most kids would be so impressed!

While I could sometimes do the tricks on the big homemade Kendama, I sure couldn’t even get close with the small aspects and shorter string of the real one. Not so with SP. As soon as it was handed to him by the sales clerk, he was extremely good.

Now he just has to keep practicing….I hear that Dutch Harbor Asia is going to have a Kendama contest during Spring Break!

Wikipedia defines a kendama as a traditional Japanese toy which consists of a wooden, hammer-like object with a ball connected to it with a string. SP has been promised a kendama (by his mamma) if he successfully cleans the kitty litter box every day for a week. He was not feeling up to par today so he spent the day with us.

I returned home from a noon meeting to find that his grandpa, Caleb, had done it again. He is famous for making SP toys out of cardboard, wood, plastic, 500 mile an hour tape…whatever he can get his hands on. SP’s cousins, at one time, were mighty jealous of a grumman goose made out of cardboard that SP could get in. It was complete with wings, floats, and a propeller. It actually graced our house for about 2 1/2 years before we relegated it to the landfill. Today he made a kendama so that SP could practice before getting the real thing.