Hiya Skeleton Crew,

I got a couple of youse guys askin me what it was I imported into the States that caused so much consternation for me last week. Well, if I’m bein totally honest with ya, it was a big ol’ … SUIT OF ARMOR!

The funny thing’s that I didn’t even mean to buy the armor in the first place: what I REALLY wanted was this big ol’ sword it came with. But the sword & the armor were kinda a single thing, I couldn’t really remove one from the other. I tried – but lemme tell ya, the sword did NOT like that!

I’d post a photo for ya, but I’ve learned that the armor don’t really like bein photographed.

Trivia 1

My new sword – well, “new” in the sense that it’s new to ME, it ain’t actually NEW new seein as how it’s an antique, but hopefully ya get what I mean – anyways, this sword I just got is a claymore, which is a type of big Scottish sword. & I was originally thinkin of askin ya ’bout claymores, but then I decided we’ve done an awful lot of trivia from the British Isles as of late, so now I’m thinkin we can go elsewhere in the world for sword-based trivia. & where else is better to go for swords than to Japan, right??

Anyways, a bamboo sword known as a shinai (竹刀) is used as a stand-in for a real-life katana in what modern martial art whose name comes from the Japanese for “way of the sword”?

Trivia 2

A type of Chinese sword that’s used in the form of Wing Chun known as Baat Jaam Dou is basically a short single-edged sword (or dao) known in English as a WHAT sword?

Now, it’s a li’l confusin, ’cause although Baat Jaam Dou translates literally as “Eight Chopping Knives”, the weapon’s sword-sized, not a li’l knife! & it definitely shouldn’t be confused with the Filipino balisong, which is a different weapon altogether!