This amazing trick (I can't do it), has had some name confusion over the years. When you search for "Kendama Boarder's Balance" on youtube you find that a lot of videos use the "Border Balance" or "Borders Balance". The pronunciation makes for a logical similarity and one could argue that the kendama is balancing on the border of your tama, which justifies the name. However, I wanted to post the following video which shows the first appearance of the trick. The video shows Takumi Okada from the Freedom Kendama videos (who sadly passed away in 2009), doing a trick that he invented. His online name apparently was Boarder, which made him name it "Boarder's Balance": The trick dates back to 2008, and only showed up in some edits over the years (Colin Sander Edit 7 in 2009 or Dutchkendama Edit 28 in 2011 come to mind). It has exploded ever since with Turner Thorne's Boarder's Flip in the Japan video and the variation to the even harder (I imagine) tightrope. I guess the name changes/variations will live on, just like Lunar Landers are now just lunars and the Bamboo Horse became the (much easier) "Stilt". Also, no matter which one you use, players will know the trick you're talking about. Which is most important anyway...
Ballard was the first person to tell me that it was boarders balance not border balance. Looked it up and he was right, I tried correcting people after that but I started sounding like a dickhead so I stopped. It'll get changed to border balance and that's cool I guess. Only certain people will know the origins of the trick.
Usually I'm not a stickler for names, but I think the history of this one is important enough to correct people; I don't want to see a kendama world where 'borders' becomes the norm. Juggler Takumi was a BIG influence for a lot of very early players outside of Japan, through his two Freedom Kendama edits. There were a lot of unorthodox tricks in those edits that undoubtedly inspired the earliest enthusiasts in the N American scene. I think its a little over-the-top to append every trick name with an 'invented by ____', but this one is important enough to at least get the name right. @Cheech_Sander I believe it was a brain aneurysm, or maybe a stroke? Kind of a sudden, freak thing. He passed right about the time I started playing, I'm sad I was never able to meet him. I know many older Japanese players who were close with him.
A lot of this will seem pretty normal now, but keep in mind these videos were put out in 2008! Back then you could probably watch ALL of the kendama edits that existed in one afternoon, the fact he was doing things like stilt rollovers was pretty unprecedented in those days. Talk to most reeally oldschool N American players, and they'll all say these edits were very important pieces of history.
Well, to be fair OG mugen paint was the stickiest available at the time. Not quite modern standards for sticky though. Tiny cups and bevels though!
The resolution on the videos makes it kind of hard to tell what he's using (can't see a seal) but IIRC the OG Ozora (lead based paints) were available in 2008 too and are reputed to be "less slick" (I hesitate to use the descriptors "sticky" or "tacky" to describe older paints compared with current gen stuff.) In any event impressive moves on what appears to be "old school" JKA kendama.
In the Freedom videos he's using a yellow mugen, at the time it was the only yellow tama available so despite the low resolution, this much is fairly certain. I think Shin Fuji made a VERY small number of mustard yellow tamas, but those are super rare, and wouldn't have been the go-to of any player. Yellow ozoras came out when the OG ozora line was retired, maybe in ~2011 iirc?
IIRC TK16s also came in yellow but I can't confirm when they were released originally (though I don't think it looks like a TK shape in the video). Also do you know if the Shinsakura was still available then? I know they received their "nintei seal" around the same time as the TK16 but don't know for sure how long production continued.
Yellow TK16s came later than the yellow Ozos even. During the time the Freedom videos were released there was just red, blue, black and natty TKs on the market. Choices were quite limited! There is a definite reason that many N Americans that started playing in the 2008-2011 had a red TK16 as their first kendama: there were hardly any other options available haha. Perhaps a couple Chinese brands were around (KCN battle, KC Winner), but they were more expensive and only available through more obscure websites, so they weren't usually a 'first dama'. Shin Sakuras... were maybe still available? I'm not sure exactly when they went out of production... probably sometime between 2005-2008? Hmm thats a good question. I don't think they ever made a yellow though, at least I've never seen it. Similar to TK16s: they had a red, blue, black, and natty.
Part of that is likely because, as I understand it, the JKA has generally recommended red as the first color of a new kendama maker. The only exception I can think of happened in recent times with the Yumu. In some cases red is all that is made by a given manufacturer either for a long time or for the duration of production. Gentosha's Hajimete no Kendama was its first JKA seal kendama (suisho) and was only available in red for quite a while. Ikeda currently only offers red and I've heard of no plans for other colors. From what I understand red has always kind of been seen as the "traditional" color of a kendama.
That makes sense: its funny how the JKA's recommendation for red being a first kendama was so successful, that even most N American players would go on to say "red is the classic! your first kendama should be red". At least that was the case years ago, not as much anymore with newer generations of players.
I've always assumed so... but I'm not certain. Might need to ask an old JKA member. ... maybe years of moshikame testing have proven that red paint is waay more durable for some reason? lol