I dislike laziness

I love facts.
I am an engineer, so I have been educated to look at hard numbers and to find explanations to event in a matter-of-fact way. I am no scientist: meaning that I look at the practical answers to the problem at hand, instead of investigating it just for the pure pleasure of knowledge.
Having said so, let`s talk shinai.

Shinai are fascinating objects, because they offer so many interpretations of themselves.
They are complex devices, they require excellent craftsmanship to be fit for use. At the same time, they are the consumables of Kendo. I cannot count how many shinai I used in my career. Judging only by the splintered staves scattered in my garden  (recycled to support plants), I must have gone well beyond several hundreds. I have bunches of shinai in Italy, Holland and Japan - I still keep buying shinai, to test the different types and discover my own. I love the beauty of the bamboo, the different colours available and the ingenuity of the different shapes available.
At the beginning of my career, shinai would go incredibly fast. I guess it is a common phenomenon: beginners hit too hard and they pay for this. Nevertheless, my senpai spent time to teach me how to take care of my shinai - it was for practical purposes (scarcity is the mother of invention... and of sandpaper), but all this care also had a strong symbolical meaning. The shinai is your sword - your life depends on it, respect it as if it had been handed to you by generations of ancestors.
This teaching is so ingrained in me that even nowadays I cringe whenever I see a shinai leaning aganist a wall with the tip on the floor, or I see someone who steps across one, as if he/she was happily dancing in the Highlands:

or. even worse, lean on it as if he/she was a Corazziere in high uniform.
I love the Corazzieri from the bottom of my heart, but this pose does not belong to the dojo.

Corazziere della Repubblica Italiana

Years ago shinai always needed to be tended even when they were new. We would take them apart (a very scary process, when you were not really sure you would be able to assemble them right again...), smooth with sandpaper the sharp edges of the staves, then oil them with linseed oil. We would have intense debates about the different merits of crude and boiled linseed oil: endless talks during the post-keiko drinks.
Nowadays, none of this is necessary anymore. I find out that some friends still go through the process anyway, because... no real reason, but they do it anyway. Old habits are hard to die.
Then one ugly day, came the end to all the linseed oil  - related conversations. Columbus`s egg: the shinai that did not need any of the care that bamboo needed, because it was not made of bamboo.
Not only ugly as hell, but also the triumph of all lazy kenshi: why spending useless hours shaving your splintered shinai, when you could have a shinai that does not splinter at all? Little mattered that it would hit harder on your mates heads, as long as it would not break.
We can still have the little consolation that the different elastic response is hard not only on the heads of the victims, but also on the shoulder ligaments of the holder. Pity it takes too long to make them reconsider out of sheer physical damage: laziness is a powerful lever.
Once the fascination of the new could have been understandable - nowadays, not anymore.

And since I love facts, let`s stick to the facts.
How many hachidan sensei or high level Japanese kenshi have you ever seen using a non-bamboo shinai?
I think this is the only answer that counts.