Uchu Ki-in

Uchu Ki-in (or Space Ki-in) is the largest Go club in the Tokyo area.

Table of contents Ownership Facility Price Games Lessons Online activities

Ownership

Uchu Ki-in is owned by Mr. Hirayama, president of the Kanagawa Prefecture Go Association (KPGA) and the CEO of Kanazon Group.

Facility

Uchu Ki-in is located near the JR Yokohama station (only 1 minute by walk). They have 100 boards and 200 seats for visitors. Boards include shogi boards. They also have vendor machines for visitors.

Price

Uchu Ki-in is a large place but the price is same as Shinjuku Go Center. In other words, it is cheaper than the ANA Intercontinental Tokyo Go Salon and Okura Tokyo Go Salon.

Games

Local preliminaries for All Japan Female Amateur Championship, Amateur Meijin, Amateur Honinbo, World Amateur Go Championship and others are usually held at here with the support of KPGA. Preliminaries for youth championships (operated by the Kanagawa Prefecture High School Go Association and Kanagawa Prefecture Junior High School Go Association since 1996) are also offered.

Lessons

There are many kinds of lessons at here:

• Unegawa Marie's lesson, she is a Waseda University Go Club alumni with various records.
• Kumasaka Naoko's lesson, she is a former Insei at Nihon Ki-in
• Youth lessons by Mr. Kobayashi (Kobayashi Satoru's relative)

Online activities

Uchu Ki-in and their members have sponsored Internet Go exchanges using OGS or KGS Go Server. They had friendship matches with France ( Feb 2015, Nov 2015, May 2017, Nihon Ki-in announcement 1, Nihon Ki-in announcement 2) and mainland China.

The games with mainland China was held to celebrate the 45th anniversary of the Japan-PRC Joint Decleration, and it was held on October 1st, 2017 (PRC National Foundation Day, news).

The games with France in 2017 was held to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Rennes- Sendai Partnership.

All of these games were operated by Go Renaissance (GoR), a non-profit organization that aimed the digital innovation of the international Go community. GoR was disestablished in April 2020 due to the economic effect of COVID-19 and the founder's retirement. But fortunately, the GoR spirit is somewhat continued among Japanese youth Go players.