SAKURA

Zurich Go club

Here it is, already April. Milan is dressed in her spring garments. Clocks have been switched to summer time, and it's still light even after 8 PM.        At this time of the year, the stars are the cherry blossoms. Here in Italy, too, they are a delight for the eyes; you often see them in parks and lanes.        However, there's no custom of flower-viewing in Italy. The cherry blossom is just one flower among many and no one pays them any special attention. To me this is quite scandalous, but my Italian husband finds my reaction mysterious: 'Why do Japanese make such a fuss about just this one flower?" At times like this, when I have trouble finding an answer, I content myself with commenting: 'I guess customs differ.'

The 6th Mr. Ing' Cup European Children's Tournament in Poland

When it starts to get warmer like this in April, my life becomes busier, and I start making trips here and there to teach, like someone who's woken up from hibernation.        This year I went to Poland for the 6th Mr. Ing's Cup European Children's Tournament. It was a great success, with over 140 children taking part. I was also invited to a Zurich tournament, and, for the first time, I made a presentation in English on teaching methods at a Go Instructors Seminar in Cannes. Oh, I almost forgot to mention: I made a live appearance on TV in Lugarno in Switzerland. That sounds really impressive when written down like this, but actually . . .        Although I said Switzerland, Lugarno is actually a town on the Swiss-Italian border just 40 kilometers by car from my home. It's a really scenic area, surrounded on all sides by the Alps, with lakes everywhere you look. It's located in the only Swiss province where Italian is also an official language, so emotionally it also feels really close to home. Of course, you need a passport to go there and the currency is different . . .        I heard that the national broadcasting station, Swiss Italia TV, wanted to feature go and chess in an information program telecast every day before dinner, so I infiltrated the local club. After all, this was one of the smaller go clubs, with just three members -- we had trouble recruiting people to act as go players in the audience. The go players roped in all the members of their families and their relatives.        I'm pretty sure we were the main attraction in the program, but actually there was just 20 minutes devoted to go, and the rest of the program featured yoga, vegetarian cooking, a pop-song corner, telephone shopping, quizzes, advice for people with problems . . . The program went on for two hours, switching from one item to the next, then returning to the main feature just before the close.        So, what about me? A chess board and a go board were set up in the centre of the studio, and I just sat there playing throughout the program. My opponent was probably pretty surprised at being suddenly asked to play me. We were just putting on a show, so there we were, in ordinary clothes, no makeup, exposed to the glare of the camera.        We just sat silently, playing away, ignoring the delicious aromas wafting from the cookery demonstration, the bright colours illuminating the go board from a rotating rainbow light in the ceiling and the jazz from a live band. Our mood was a bit like picnickers determined to ignore rain.        The aim was probably to show what kind of game go was and how a game progressed, but what viewers saw was an Oriental woman and a middle-aged man in crumpled work clothes caught up in a strange game they'd never seen before.        My heart was going pit-a-pat at the thought that I might suddenly be asked a question in Italian on air, but I was lucky. Anyway, my first live TV appearance was at least good for a laugh afterwards.        Flower viewing is a lot less strain!        (May 2001, Monthly Go World)