Going to Go

On this day I went to the station building to a club meeting.

This object is on the sidewalk on the right side of the station. It appears to be an antique mailbox that has been painted white instead of the official red it would have been when in use. The lock at the bottom left looks new, by the way. The red writing on says akusho tsuiho posuto. I could not figure out what it means. As is often the case in Japanese I knew all of the kanji individually and understood the literal meaning of the words but could no figure out the overall meaning of the message. I knew that the first two kanji on the right, akusho, mean 'bad writing', but what does that mean? The final two kanji on the right, tsuiho, mean 'disposal or exile', which did not seem to be a problem, and the word on the left, the katakana posuto, means mailbox. So I thought about this for a long while, but in the world did 'bad writing disposal mailbox' mean? I finally gave up and asked my wife. She said that akusho refers to written things that people in general should not see, for example, pornography or things kids don't want their parents to see. So this is a place where you can leave written documents and have the disposed of in a way that other people will not see them.

 This is the elevator up to the third floor of the station building. I am on my way to my Go Club, also Igo Club, for the first time since before my operation. Notice the No Smoking and No Dogs signs beside the buttons.

 This is the third floor. This floor is used as an extension of the town office and we can do most of the paperwork here, rather than going to the main office which is out in the middle of nowhere. On the left is a bookshelf containing books from the public library. You can take them out and return them here. The main library is in Mirikaroden, where I have my art lessons. My Igo Club meets in a room at the back that is available to the public for free.

 As I walked the length of the building, I heard music. I looked out the window and saw three hula dancers. By the time I got my camera out and got positioned, they had left the stage and this woman was dancing alone.

Here are two of the club member playing a game of Go. We have a handicapping system so that it is possible for even the weakest player to have a chance of winning against the strongest. The weaker player places black stones at predesignated spots on the board, the number depending on the difference in strength between the two players, and then the other player starts freely playing the white stones. The board is 19x19 so it is a very complex game. At our level it takes 45 minutes to an  hour to play a game. There is a ranking system that starts at 35 kyu for someone with no knowledge and after reaching 1 kyu, the next rank is 1 dan and the highest rank is 9 dan. I am playing at 3 kyu level at the moment.