Martial art without boundaries There's a new illustration in the gallery on the topic of Shapes in the Martial Arts. This was drawn for the May issue of MAI magazine so you won’t find it in the book. This one really span off from the well-known oddity that a boxing ring isn’t round.  

I had some problems with the old blog software (so I’ve moved across to WordPress, if you’re nerdy enough to care). Currently this means some comments from old posts are missing. All in good time these will be reinstated. There are some other small tweaks still to be done, but generally I think most things [...]

The Portland Aikikai dojo is itself so aesthetically pleasing it's a wonder they let ugly visitors on the mat at all. The sign said "SHUT UP AND TRAIN" when I first turned up. A week later, it had been changed. Not by me. It's been quiet on the Fudebakublog because I've been busy — just back from Portland, [...]

A final, sad view of Mr Bike being taken away in a van. I've obscured the number-plate so you can imagine it was FBD 1. For what it's worth, "Honda" is a genuine samurai family name. This weekend saw the retirement of a much-loved member of the Exploding Pen team . . . Mr Bike was the unimaginatively named, two-wheeled, [...]

Trophies at Seni08. I didn't win one. Based on what I saw, it might have been because I wasn't being silly enough. This weekend Seni, the UK's big martial arts expo, was held in London. Exploding Pen didn't have a stand this year and the event was, of course, poorer as a result. I did attend though, [...]

A lady takes a bow There's a new illustration in the gallery on the topic of Women Fighting Men. You won't find this one in the book — it was drawn for the May issue of MAI magazine (the one with Shannon Lee on the cover). Working on this one reminded me of something that I didn't have [...]

A pugilist I've just uploaded a new illustration on the topic of the noble art of boxing. This one doesn't exist in the book — it was done for the December issue of MAI magazine.  

Exploding Pen is about to migrate to a different webserver. This may result in an interruption to our otherwise reliable, unflappable service. If you feel a tremor in the Force during your training, that's what it was. Sometime in the next week, we should clunk and bump onto the new machine. Etin, CFO of the [...]

Starting from the current issue, Fudebakudo now appears in Martial Arts Illustrated magazine in the UK each month. Hello to readers of MAI who are new to the esoteric and sophisticated world of the Way of the Exploding Pen.  

Well, we survived Seni 2007 — see the full report. Shoko-san skilfully holds a copy of the book without obscuring any of the cover artwork This year, for the first time our veteran sales champion Jun-san was unable to join us — she's returned to Japan where I believe she now lives as a hermit in [...]