(First, I apologize for the lack of Japanese Candy Friday last week. My internet was down for a couple days, but I promise a new and exciting candy update this week.)

When I first heard my school had a naginata club, I knew I wanted to join. Naginata is a Japanese martial art in which armor-clad girls spar with each other using long bamboo poles. Is there anything cooler than that? In traditional times, naginata was taught to women so they could defend their homes -- back then, the pole was topped with a sharp knife, and the preferred fatal blow was a slice to the jugular -- and today the art is a mix of choreographed moves and fast-moving sparring matches. It is actually practiced by both sexes, but at my school the club is all girls, which makes the whole thing feel more like I joined a secret academy of crime-fighters.

Saturday was my first practice. It started off with training, which included jumping in a big jump-rope, jogging around the perimeter of the school and doing two-person stretches. "Onegaishimasu," said one of my little first-year students, bowing, which is what you say when you want to be someone's partner. Moments later, she was using the weight of her body to press me even deeper into my stretch. (I've seen the baseball team at my school doing two-person stretches, and have pondered how unlikely it would be to see two American high school boys extending each other's calves.) After stretching I learned "quiet walking," a special shushing way to move from one side of the gym to the other. I was good at quiet walking. Maybe I should be a ninja.

Then: the naginata. Emi, the teacher, showed me how the curved top of the naginata is supposed to be like the knife of olden times. This is the part that should connect with the shins, head, wrists or throat of your opponent. Then I learned the first of five sets of choreographed movements and practiced them again and again, first with the teacher, then with one of the students, then -- while everyone else put on their battle gear -- with a pole dressed in armor. I learned the right way to bow, to stand, to sit, to step, to hold the naginata. There seemed a million factors to constantly monitor. I had never before felt so flaccid and imprecise.

When the sparring drills were over -- I was eventually recruited as the timekeeper and whistle-blower -- we did two-person calisthenics. After each round, my partner (who counted off hesitatingly in English) said, "Nice fight!" which somehow did make me feel better about my groans during the last five sit-ups. During the light weight training, we listened to J-pop and yelled out the names of fruits after each set. "Yuzu! Mikan! Ichigo!" We did a final stretch and then the practice was over, almost four hours of home defense preparation completed. Forget the fact I have barely been able to walk for the last two days: I love naginata.