Despite it being a traditional board game in Japan, my first introduction to Go was online back in the year 2009. An online friend of mine invited me to play and showed me a website that introduced the basics. From the start, I was hooked. I played several games, which could take from twenty minutes to an hour, each day, and I improved rapidly. After a year of playing the game online, I took an interest in playing the game in person as well. My Japanese skills were limited at the time, but I was able to find several Go clubs where I could play as well as the local organization for the official Japanese Go Federation (called the Nihon Kiin). I can still remember the surprise on the elderly Japanese people’s faces as I walked into the clubs asking to play. I was regularly asked “do you know how to play?” by the staff and my opponents at each new place I visited. It only took one day playing at a club for them to remember me as the young foreigner that was surprisingly good at the game. After finding the Nihon Kiin, it became my normal place to play, and I have many good memories from those times.

At both the Go clubs and the Kiin, the people I played against and those I talked to were always friendly and open. When I played games with weaker players, they accepted me giving them advice on how to improve, and stronger players were open to doing the same for me. Since the Kiin was one branch of the official organization, I also met a number of professional Go players. Of them, I remember one old man the best. He regularly gave me advice on how to improve and talked about his experiences having traveled around the world. From talking with him, I learned a lot about the experience of being a professional Go player. It was in part thanks to him that I felt motivated to keep trying after I hit my first wall while playing at the Kiin. The kindness and patience of the people I played with helped me to improve my Japanese, and it also helped me find a hobby that centered me. Even though I rarely play nowadays, the times I do I find to be calming and soothing. It’s one of the few indoor activities I’ve found that challenges me without bringing me any kind of stress. I think playing Go has positively helped me grow to be the calm person that I am now. I will always look back fondly at those days and smile at the memory of the friendships I made.