A new chapter begins with X-Tameshigiri

I have recently been asked to join another group called X-Tameshigiri. It's similar to the Freestyle Cutters and has members from that group but it's a lot more active. unfortunately, FSC seems to have taken a nose dive. I believe that this was because its leadership was centralised and because those people then ducked out of the group to pursue other things in their life, that left a big black hole in the centre of the groups organisation. For whatever reasons, I'm still a member of the FSC but I've completed the curriculum cuts there and now there's nothing more to do. X-Tameshigiri is a different group with a different angle on things and much more challenging cuts. I don't know if I'm going to be able to make these grades or not, but it should be fun to try.

At first glance, the cuts here don't look very much different to the sort of cuts that turned up on the FSC grades 2 and 3 as they're all double cuts from an unsheathed position on two stacked bottles but if you take a closer look, these cuts require the cutter to shift the sword around the bottles after the first cut as well as reangle the blade for the second. The movements feel weird at the moment but then, so did the others, especially the returning cuts of FSC Grade 3. I suppose these ones will get easier.