12/1/08
Nakatani Apartment, Nagoya

Today I had lunch with my host mom and a couple of her friends at the indian place. I understand I'll be seeing them again this friday, some kind of party.

After that, I trucked down to Kanayama to visit a Go salon. It wasn't too intuitive to find, but I was lucky and stumbled across it. It was exactly what I had expected, just like in Hikaru no Go. There were a lot of old dudes... well, all of them were old dudes... and it was smokey. I explained to the lady at the desk that I was 11kyu, but none of the people there were my strength (presumably they've all been playing for a lot longer than I have). I guess I was interesting, though, 'cause a dude who looked like the manager came up and volunteered to play me. He gave me nine stones, and I still lost by about 50 points. He went over the game with me afterwards and gave me some tips, that was nice. Then he hooked me up with another guy, who gave me four stones. I played two games with him, and lost both of the in the endgame by resignation. They were fun games, I managed to outplay him in one spot, even if it wasn't enough to win the game. After that he left, and I figured it was about time for me to go home too.

I had gotten an SGF editor on my DS and was all eager to try it out, but I ended up not using it; it was hard enough fitting in without playing with some fancy gadget. I even forgot to take any pictures.

On the subway platform waiting for the train, I missed my hat. I kinda panicked, thinking it was probably still back at the salon, and started walking back. Then I found it, on my head. All good.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for making me die laughing in the middle of the computer lab. >.<

Jeff said...

You will be unlikely to fit in in any smoky dive... don't worry about that. Just play the tourist. I think a very Japanese thing to do would be if you don't think you are going to return, ask someone to take a picture of you with your opponent.

You could also check out Nagoya Nihon Ki-in or the Osaka Kansai Ki-in. Where do Nagoya HnG fans go to learn?

The hat ending was good for a LOL :)