I grew up fishing with a cane pole about 16 feet long with a piece of monofiliment tied to it. A tenkara rod is essentially a high tech cane pole. Its a good meat collecting rod especially with a bobber worms and a boat. With all due respect to OM, who loves her rod and what it does for her - I don't really call that "fishing" [I am an acknowledged purist OK?], although I do use the same techniques with my fly rod on tiny streams, I can also put a fly MUCH further out than you can without a reel.

My sage 8 foot 4 weight rod weighs 2.2 oz and my reel weighs 5.7 oz with spool line and tippet. Flies wouldn't add another ounce, but I would most likely add line nippers and tiny hemostats which would put me pretty close to OMs 11 oz. Notice that neither of us are adding the weight of a rod tube...
Jim