Japan - cool places

    Keywords: Clubs & Places

Places to visit when in Japan, related to Go. Shopping, bookstores, clubs, restaurants, historical places, events, cemeteries, shrines, transport etc.

Please add your choices. Thanks!

See also Wikitravel, a worldwide travel guide Wiki. Information of interest specifically to Go players should be added here; more general travel info should go there. Their Japan page is here: [ext] http://wikitravel.org/en/Japan

Table of contents


Tokyo Area

Ben's Cafe

I can recommend [ext] Ben's Cafe located in Shinjuku district of Tokyo, just next to JR Takadanobaba Station. Atmosphere was very friendly and my beginner friends got a very good teaching session in English. Be warned though that their website says there will be go lessons at 11:00 am every Sunday, but there wasn't lesson when I just visited the place and playing only started afted twelve. I still got to play some good games and had fun. It's a good place to have breakfast too. --Esko Arajärvi 31.3.2007

Address: 1-29-21 Takadanobaba, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 169-0075
Phone +81-3-3202-2445

Nihon Ki-in

Tamsin If you can, do try and visit the Nihon Ki-in's main office. You need to get off at the Ichigaya subway stop and find your way from there (it's not far and the Nihon Ki-in have a map, albeit an upside-down one, on their website). You will find lots of gobans and stones on display, plus photos from historic matches at which these pieces of equipment were used. If you're nice, somebody will probably show the famous "Yugen no ma" or "Room of Profound Darkness", the press room and the the inseis' playing rooms -- all uncannily accurately reproduced in Hikaru no Go. The Nihon Ki-in also runs a very big playing salon for the public. They will fix you up with appropriate opponents and everyone is very kind. Finally, if you can't get along to the Nihon Ki-in, but feel the urge to play, you can find dozens of go clubs, large and small, listed in the English language edition of the Tokyo phone book.

Address: 7-2 Gobancho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 102-0076
Phone: +81-3-3288-8727

Go Shops

In Tokyo, the [ext] Akashiya Shoten bookshop in Jimbocho is the specialist second-hand store. Charles Matthews, RafaelCaetano, Richard Hunter

[ext] Here is a picture of the shop on Google Street View. I hope that's the one - it's on this street in any case. It's a rather small shop, but full of books on Go and shogi.

--- BobMcGuigan In Tokyo the Maruhachi Gobanten and Maezawa Gobanten are two shops where really top quality go equipment is sold. You can see a kaya board that costs US$200,000.

[ext] Shinjuku Ookubo Goban Ten

Go Salons

Dogenzaka is close to the Shibuya station, Tokyo. This Go Salon is featured in Hikaru No Go number 8.

The New Otani Hotel has a [ext] Go Salon on the tenth floor. It is small, but has a really nice atmosphere. Kobayashi Chizu-sensei told me that the previous hotel owner was a Go player, and back then the Go salon had much bigger premises, but now his son has taken over the hotel and has moved the Go salon to a smaller location. I've taken some [ext] pictures. -- maruseru

kokiri - actually the imperial hotel had a small salon, too, last time i checked. I didn't play there, but chatted to the receptionist a bit. IIRC, they had a professional (i think it was mainly female pros as i recall) turn up for a regular teaching session on a friday afternoon (c. 2005)

The Sunshine Go Club, 9th floor of the Sunshine Building in Tokyo’s east Ikebukuro neighborhood. [ref AGA ejournal May 28, 2009; Volume 10, #23]


Kyoto Area

Daitokuji complex

kokiri One of the subtemples in the Daitokuji complex in Kyoto had a go board on display upon which Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu played. See [ext] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Go_board_Hideyoshi_Ieyasu_Ryogenin_M1868.jpg It's not exactly must-see, but a bit of go history in a pleasant setting nevertheless.


Other Areas

BobMcGuigan I'd recommend visiting Shusaku's birthplace in Innoshima, on the Inland Sea. It isn't in a major tourist area so it would need a special trip, but there is a Shusaku museum there where you can see his favorite goban and stones. Innoshima has a web page (do a Google search) and you can get travel directions to the Shusaku museum there.

BobMcGuigan: How about Onioshidashi? It's a park-like natural site a couple of hours by train outside of Tokyo. Many years ago a massive volcanic eruption created a lava field which by now has become a beautiful park, with shrubs and flowers and birds all over. There are paths through the lava on which you can walk. The volcano is still somewhat active and you can see it smoking in the distance. Just to make it tangentially relevant to SL, when I visited there more than 15 years ago I bought at the souvenir shop by the entrance small ceramic figures of two frogs playing go. You can get there by bus from Karuizawa Station and Nakakaruizawa Station on the Shinetsu Main train line, or Naganoharakusatsu Station and Manza-Shikazawaguchi Station on the Azuma line.

Rafael Caetano I guess most people interested in JapanCoolPlaces are going to the big cities such as Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, etc. Anyway, if you're willing to travel a bit more, there's Hyuga city, in Miyazaki prefecture, Kyushu. Hyuga is "the home of the shell clam stones".
I was lucky to go to Hyuga in 2001, as the Brazilian representative in the WAGC. An English guide who worked there showed us a very small "cemetery-island" close to the beach. They say that samurais were buried there. Instead of flowers, there were go stones on top of the graves. No kidding.


Links

Go in Kyoto

[ext] rec.games.go mentions a go salon in Kyoto near the main JR station. It maybe the same as [ext] this google map link suggested by Uizado at [ext] GD .


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