Traveling Board

Report From Shikoku
February 2, 2004
By Solomon Smilack

After half a year in a remote area of Japan, my go playing has found a routine. Yokoyama sensei allows me to invite myself to his house every couple weeks, and my handicap against him has shrunk from five stones to four. Though he is in his late sixties and earned his 4 dan certificate decades ago, he still studies regularly. He also introduced me to a group of old men that play in the cape town nearby. There are six or seven players, all at least twice my age, and on any given Saturday, Sunday, or public holiday they get together for a few hours of light play. Though my game has improved, I still need a handicap between two and seven stones to get an even result with any of them.

While I am not playing every day, as I had hoped to, I find that two or three days per week is enough. I actually find a lot of other opportunities to play, study, and even teach. On Sunday morning NHK television airs a recent tournament match, and on other days I can study from books. During a 3 day conference for foreign English teachers, armed with copies of Karl Baker's "The Way to Go," I taught several people how to play the capture game. I also played a game with the Kouchou sensei (principal) of one of my schools. The stones were quite old, and I was lucky not to cut myself on them and even luckier that the Kouchou sensei's game was not as sharp as they were or I would have been slaughtered. Afterwards the Kyoutou sensei (vice principal) solicited a future game with me, and the Kouchou sensei promised to bring his own set for future games. As the Kouchou sensei put the ancient stones back on the shelf, they seemed to sense that their time had come and they slipped from his hands to meet their noisy end on the tile floor.

In general, Japanese people are surprised that I play go and even more amazed when I tell them that I learned how to play from the internet. But getting away from the internet has been a boon for me. Not only does it allow me to interact more with Japanese people, but the go board is a bridge that covers the language gap. I find the same satisfaction with sports: the rules of the game provide a basis for mutual understanding. Language ability, if it exists, serves to enrich that understanding. One of the things that drives me to study more Japanese is a desire to better understand Yokoyama sensei's lessons. And the reverse is also true: I have learned a lot of new vocabulary while playing go that I can use in my communication with Japanese friends and coworkers. I still miss playing online, but only because my online rank was a way of measuring my progress.
When all is said and done, the rank is just a number the personal
connections that I am making are much more important.

Back to Columns