Why should it be scary?
It has no intent to harm you. Its just a hunk of wood.
Its the wielder of said hunk of wood thats the issue.
If you are concentrating on the jo, (ken, tanto,- baseball bat, iron bar, gun) certainly you will be scaried, I would be too. So don't.
Rather train enough so you start to feel the movement as a whole and the 'weapon' becomes less an issue. Ma-ai becomes you friend and will constantly be adjusting and tweaking as the situation develops. Then, its almost irrelevant that you are being attacked with or with out a weapon. Almost.
That said, like most people that have trained for any length of time may know, it
can go horrible pear shaped.
In the midst of a jo awase, that little dot they call the end of a jo, that should be attacking my knee area, found a way of occupying the space I reserve for my mouth. With the fastest of movements, I whipped my head back but unfortunately,---------.
Oh well, it gave the brown belt something to talk about later.
Then there was the time with the ken-------. That was even scarier.
Point is, things happen. Train well and you will avoid most of these problems, but we do a physical art and some 'close calls' will occur. But following your training will keep you in good stead.
The easiest parallel in daily life is like when you drive a car, you don't look at the steering wheel to know to turn it when you want to change direction, nor to look at the pedals when we want to speed up or slow down, indeed, if we did, the whole driving experience would take on a far more scary flavour.
The same with a aikido movement. Just train so you don't
have to look at the attacking item, its just - there.
Takusan