A frightening two weeks

By the time you read this, it will be well into the new year, but I'm writing with the sounds of jingle bells in my ears. You'll have to excuse the time lag. I wound up my year's activities with the Italian Championship, held as an MSO event. MSO stands for Mind Sports Olympiad and it covers mental games of every kind. Its base is in London, but it organizes tournaments and other events throughout the world. This was its first event in Milan. Actually the Italian Go Association had sounded me out about participating myself, with the aim of raising the level of amateur play, so, for the first time in my four years in Italy, I competed in a tournament. Playing on even. Getting a komi if I had white. And getting a tuition fee. About 60 people competed in the three-day tournament, with each player playing seven games.

Under these conditions, it was quite different from playing teaching games; regardless of who the opponent was, I played seriously. It felt good to be playing seriously again after such a long break, but, to be honest, it made me nostalgic for professional games in Japan. The winner was . . . me. I felt a little strange as I received the enormous trophy. Based on the results of this tournament, a best-of-five play-off was later held between the top two Italians, and the winner was crowned as Italian champion. This is the record of my game with the player who came second, Paolo Montrasio. He represented Italy in last year's World Amateur Go Championship and has got stronger recently. He's a player to watch out for.

the game with Paolo Montrasio

In Italy, the period from Christmas to Epiphany on 6 January is like the period that we call the New Year Week in Japan. During this holiday, families and relatives and friends get together and have a series of parties. To cut a long story short, it's a frightening two weeks during which people eat and eat and eat. As you know, formal Italian meals are very big. Starting out with antipasto, they move on to raw ham (an average Japanese would have had enough to eat by this point), then they have the main course, followed by dessert and after-dinner drinks, then finally coffee. It's quite a marathon, and with serious diners could easily stretch out to over three hours. Actually, unless it's some special event, not even Italians order all the courses; generally, they would choose two out of the three courses of antipasto, raw ham, and main dish. In Milan, there's a cake called pannetone that is indispensable in this period. I hear that recently it's starting to become popular in Japan, too. It's a cake make of spongy dough (bread). In Japan, people listen to the temple bell ringing in the New Year and eat crossing-over-to-the-new-year noodles (toshikoshi soba). In Milan, the custom is to eat pannetone and drink spumante, a sparkling white wine, and to kiss everyone else present.

When I say kiss, in practice people seem to just brush their cheeks against each other and make a kissing sound with their mouths (of course, there are also people who have a proper kiss). The proper Italian style is to do this twice, on each cheek, first on the right, then on the left. In other countries, the custom is to do it three times, or left before right. If you get confused, it can be quite dangerous! Why? I'll let you work that out yourself. These days I'm a real fan of this custom. Some rude people don't kiss me because they think that, as a Japanese, I mightn't know the custom, but this annoys me. It took me a year to master this custom and to learn how to give a toast in Italian. Now I'm an expert. (By the way, instead of 'kanpai', Italians say 'chin-chin'. I'm going to spend all the energy I stored up during winter teaching go in the land of eternal summer, Cuba. Hubby? He's going to look after the house in cold, cold Milan! See you! (February 2001, Monthly Go World)