I grew up mowing the lawn. I did it for my parents back in Brazil, and when I came to live in the US as an exchange student I also mowed the lawn for my host family almost every weekend. Both of my families always had powerful gas or electric lawn mowers.

When I was about 10, I remember seeing a neighbor using this very funny contraption; it had no electric cables nor an engine. It made no noise. He just pushed it around while some blades seemed to make the grass shorter. I couldn’t fathom how that tool could possibly cut grass. It looked so old school. I thought to myself the poor guy couldn’t afford an actual lawn mower. Nonetheless I was very intrigued.

Yesterday, for the first time, I had to mow my own lawn. But, before the lawn could be mowed I had to shop for my first lawn mower. There are many choices out there: electric or gas; self-propelled or push; cheap or expensive. I opted for simple.

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As a good follow up to the post I wrote yesterday, the Denver Post is featuring a story on tenkara in today’s paper. It is a well-written piece by Scott Willoughby. Check it out: http://www.denverpost.com/outdoors/ci_22576834/simplicity-is-sacred-japanese-tenkara-technique-fly-fishing

Lance Gurney, a loyal Tenkara USA customer, volunteered at our booth this weekend at the Somerset Fly Fishing Show. He took the long drive from Maine to New Jersey to help out and hang out with us. A very interesting man, among stories of being training elephants, rescuing leopards, chasing cobras, and his former life as a police officer, Lance talks of his fondness of simplicity after he discovered tenkara.
 

A huge thanks to Ed Baldridge and Lance Gurney for helping us for the last couple of days at the show!

Like many of other people out there, I’m currently reading Steve Job’s biography. It’s an incredible story. I decided to read it for numerous reasons: Jobs was a brilliant businessman, with a very interesting life story, and his company had created products that embodied simplicity in their design and their functionality.
For many years I have been interested in product design, particularly the clean lines of Japanese design – old and new. Before I started Tenkara USA I was very excited when my brother started studying product design, and tried to convince him to spend some time in Japan, though he never did.
Today I read an interesting passage in the book about the philosophy of Jonathan Ive, the designer for Apple’s recent products (and who, coincidentally, shares his first name with my brother). Great food for thought, and can be very well interpreted for tenkara:

Why do we assume that simple is good? Because with physical products, we have to feel we can dominate them. As you bring order to complexity, you find a way to make the product defer to you. Simplicity isn’t just a visual style. It’s not just minimalism or the absence of clutter. It involves digging through the depth of the complexity. To be truly simple, you have to go really deep. For example, to have no screws on something, you can end up having a product that is so convoluted and so complex. The better way is to go deeper with the simplicity, to understand everything about it and how it’s manufactured. You have to deeply understand the essence of a product in order to be able to get rid of the parts that are not essential.

- Jonathan Ive, from the book, Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson

Another thought, when I discovered tenkara nets, I became enamored with their simplicity of design and origin. And, at the same time, with their functionality which is vastly superior to that of a western fly fishing net. And – not kidding – I have often said in my presentations about them, that I thought if we went to the people at Apple and asked them to design a fly-fishing net from scratch they would probably do something similar to a tenkara net.

Happy New Year!

Today Midcurrent sent out a newsletter with a topic named “Fearless Fly Fishing Predictions – 2010“. No one explicitly said 2010 was going to be the year of tenkara fly-fishing – when newcomers and experienced anglers discover that fly-fishing is really simple and these anglers realize for themselves that the long tenkara rods provide significant advantages to fishing, and that reels are really not necessary in most small stream fishing – but everyone seemed to have these thoughts near their words. We particularly liked the second prediction, by author Lou Ureneck:

“One of the best things about fishing is its resistance to change. Too much technology, too fast, seems an affront to the soul of the sport. So my hope (and prediction) for the New Year is that fishing will find its equivalent to Europe’s slow-food movement — cooking based on local ingredients, prepared slowly and with care for taste and health. A slow-fishing movement would return us to the health of our local streams, fishing deliberately, maybe with a youngster at our side, with cell phone apps and iPod ear plugs safely out of sight. Just a man and a fish, with a rod and a line between.”

Other interesting predictions were:

“…the continued Balkanization, or specialization, or fracturing, or whatever you want to call it, among fly anglers… the various fly-fishing subcultures—tournament bass fishermen, carp anglers, steelheaders, backcountry saltwater fishermen and so on —will continue to define themselves more distinctly and vocally.” – Ted Leeson, Author. He failed to include tenkara anglers in the subcultures, but you are part of a distinct, and shall we say, a very cool group of anglers!

“Trends for trouties: The European proliferation of deadly nymphing techniques will continue to gnaw on Yank rod makers, who after many years of ignoring anything longer than 8 1/2 ft. and 9 ft. rods for regular fishing are going to convince users of the versatility found in longer (9 1/2 on up) equipment.” – Paul Bruun, Columnist and Guide. Huh!

Our prediction is that 2010 will be an awesome year for angling with a rod, line and a fly; when angling will be the simple and relaxing experience we crave, when you don’t need to (though you may still want to) travel far to enjoy pristine waters and wild fish, and perhaps a year of retirement for your underworked reel. This will be a tenkara fly-fishing year for many anglers throughout the world who will enjoy the simplicity and relaxation only tenkara allows.

One of the main reasons most anglers are attracted to tenkara fly-fishing – whether a tenkara veteran such as Dr. Ishigaki, or any of the recent adopters of tenkara – is, simply put, simplicity. That draws some to add it to their repertoire, and makes others leave their reels behind permanently. That is also the reason we have fallen in love with tenkara fly-fishing to begin with.

In his column“Gazing into the future of angling in America”, writer Mr. Gordon Wickstrom defines the two most current eras of fly-fishing: “The Trout Unlimited” period, and now, “The New Period“:

Now the fishing that remains to us– I’m going to call it “The New Period”– will be marked, I think, by greater simplicity of gear, technique, style and purpose. It will be done closer to home, more impromptu and with less media attention. It will be gentler, more elegant, and less aggressive — in some ways more old fashioned…
There’s my new friend in San Francisco who is introducing the tackle and practice of Tenkara, an ancient Japanese method of fishing the fly with a long, reel-less rod and short line.
It is a method of the same values as we envision for our new national life … For me, Tenkara is a sign of the times.

From the beginning, the vision behind Tenkara USA has been to show the simplicity inherent – although long forgotten – in the art of fly-fishing. We have not yet ellaborated much on our philosophy, but, in sum, it is:

“fly-fishing is simple”

…..don’t let them fool you.