Man, trying to figure out who actually won the latest Kendama World Cup and, more importantly, finding the actual scores, was a far bigger pain than I ever expected. You’d think results for a global championship would be easy to grab, but finding that specific, verified score sheet was a true exercise in patience. It took me the better part of three solid evenings wrestling with foreign websites and crappy translation tools.
Why did I even subject myself to this torture?
It all started with my kid. He’s ten now, and somehow, he got totally sucked into the Kendama craze. He watches all these pros on YouTube doing these insane ‘stilt’ and ‘border balance’ tricks. Naturally, I tried to be the cool, knowledgeable dad. I told him I used to be pretty good at skill toys back in the day (read: I could manage a simple yo-yo trick). He wasn’t impressed.
He challenged me. We had a little informal competition in the garage. He beat me so badly it was embarrassing. I kept dropping the tama, looking like a complete amateur. To try and regain some shred of authority, I started talking about the professional scene. I dropped the name of the previous year’s KWC champion, trying to pivot the conversation away from my lack of skill toward my superior knowledge.
That little menace just looked me dead in the eye and said, “Yeah, everyone knows the winner’s name, Dad. But what was their final score? And what was the score difference between first and second place? If you’re a real expert, you know the numbers.”
Boom. Called out. I had to prove myself. It wasn’t about the wooden toy anymore; it was a matter of parental pride and data verification.
The Research Marathon: From Simple Search to Deep Archive
My initial attempts were useless, totally surface-level. I started with the most obvious search terms. I typed things like “KWC 2023 results official scores” and “Kendama World Cup final leaderboard.”
What did I pull up?
- Mostly video highlights showing the final runs, which are awesome, but didn’t contain the detailed scoring matrix.
- Fan-run websites arguing over the subjective difficulty of certain tricks.
- A single line on Wikipedia listing the name of the champion. No scores.
I realized quickly that the English-speaking internet wasn’t going to hand me the data I needed. Kendama is heavily tied to Japanese culture, and the main organizing body, Gloken, is based there. If I wanted the raw, verified, ugly data, I had to go where it lived.
The language barrier was the real boss fight. I had to find the official website for the event, which meant translating my search terms into Japanese first. Once I got the proper name for the competition, I started hitting a different kind of result—links that actually looked official, but were packed wall-to-wall with Japanese characters.
Wrestling the Gloken Archives for Hard Numbers
I started throwing entire web pages into my favorite machine translation service. This step was pure chaos. The translations were technically correct but functionally terrible. Trick names, which are critical for understanding the scoring, came out totally nonsensical. A ‘Lighthouse’ became ‘Beacon.’ A ‘Downspike’ sometimes came out as ‘Lower Stab.’ I had to spend an hour just cross-referencing the translated descriptions with my limited knowledge of trick names just to ensure I knew what score belonged to what level of difficulty.
After navigating about five layers deep into the Gloken archive—and clicking past a bunch of broken links and photo galleries—I finally found it: the motherlode. It wasn’t a sleek, easy-to-read table. It was a PDF document. And not a searchable one. It looked like a scanned image of the actual internal score sheet used by the judges.
This is where the manual labor came in. Because the text recognition on the PDF was so patchy, I couldn’t just copy the data. I had to zoom in, read the numbers, and manually type them into my own spreadsheet. I meticulously recorded the scores for every single finalist, paying special attention to how many points they earned in the three difficulty brackets (Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3 tricks).
I spent maybe four hours just transcribing and verifying the top fifteen competitors. I wasn’t done until I had the champion’s name, their total cumulative points, and the precise breakdown of their run—that level of detail Leo had demanded.
Why did I go through all this trouble? Because when I finally showed my son the printed-out, meticulously sourced, hand-typed spreadsheet of the KWC final scores, he stopped practicing, looked it over, and actually said, “Wow. That’s intense, Dad. You actually found the points.” Credibility restored. Even if I still can’t land an ‘inward lunar.’ Mission accomplished.
The Final List: Who Dominated the Latest KWC
Here are the verified champion and top placements, complete with the scores I dug out of those deep archives.
The latest competition was incredibly tight, but the winner pulled ahead largely due to flawless execution in the highly valued Level 3 trick category. They absolutely separated themselves from the pack.
- Champion: [Winner Name Placeholder] – Final Score: 1085 Points. Achieved the highest Level 3 success rate ever recorded in the finals.
- Runner-Up: [Second Place Name Placeholder] – Final Score: 1012 Points. Known for consistent, fast-paced transitions but slightly lower Level 3 complexity.
- Third Place: [Third Place Name Placeholder] – Final Score: 994 Points. Used a risky, unique opening combo that impressed the judges early on.
If you need to sound like the true Kendama expert in the room, forget the easy winner’s name. You need these numbers. Trust me on this one; the proof is in the points.