I believe the year was 1949 when with the help of my dad I discovered Tenkara fishing. Really. I had a nice, thin bamboo pole, a long piece of string (level line) with a hook tied on the end with an impaled "wormfly". Little did I know that 67 years later major fishing manufactures would validate my little country-boy outfit, modernize it, and with a bunch of accessories sell it for around $250.00. Add to that, guides who specialize in Tenkara fishing, and you can see where all of this is going. I am all for simplicity and glad that some of my fellow fishermen enjoy it by getting back to basics; and of course those ancient villagers who had very limited resources had to make due with what was around them in order to fish. But to be true and honor what the tradition of Tenkara really is, shouldn't it be practiced in its most purest form? To me that means how you do it and what you do you do it with. Modern equipment, telescoping rods, 5X tippets and fluorocarbon lines seem to be getting away from what those ancients really had to use. I don't have my original bamboo outfit up in the attic somewhere. And if I did, I surely wouldn't use it as it took me way too long to to save up from my paper route and get one of those newfangled fly fishing outfits from the Sears & Roebuck catalog.