I was in Tokyo yesterday and, with a just a little bit of spare time on my hands, I decided to locate and visit the main branch of the Japanese Go Association, called the Nihon Ki-in (日本棋院 in Japanese). Armed with only the address and a vague idea that it was somewhere between Tokyo station and Shinjuku station (and that’s a pretty big expanse of Tokyo), I asked the kind front desk staff at my hotel how best to get there.  Ten minutes’ walk and an additional ten minutes’ subway ride later, and I was there.

Situated a two-minute walk from the JR Ichgaya station (市ヶ谷駅) on the Sobu train line [1] and an equal two minutes away from the Ichigaya subway station (Shijuku subway line), the Nihon Ki-in building is the spitting image of the drawings in the manga Hikaru no Go. (Compare the inset images, right.)

Unfortunately, I didn’t have a lot of time to poke around on this trip, so just looked around on the ground floor.  But even the small lobby area was quite impressive, with a number of quite unique looking historical go artifacts, including what appeared to be a hand-carved go board that was clearly hundreds of years old.

It turns out that yesterday saw an important match between Takao Shinji (9p, Judan) and Cho U (9p, Meijin) in the 2009 Judan Title tournament. In the lobby of the building, about 15 or 20 people were sitting silently, intently watching a large-screen television showing a live feed of the match play.

During the interval between plays by these two professionals, I had a chance to see what events were upcoming, and the list is long. According to the fliers posted in the lobby, aside from the many courses on offer, there is to be a spring break go training camp, in that very building. For about US$80, students from elementary school through high school age can participate in daily sessions (graded by ability, from absolute beginner to high dan-grade), under the supervision of professional players. I bet that will be a lot of fun for those who participate.

There is also an amateur competition coming up at the end of the month, and if time permits, I might go back and watch some Go-playing in person.

[Note 1] Ichigaya station is on the JR Sobu line, which has yellow color-coded trains.  It shares a rail right-of-way with the Chuo line in central Tokyo, which means that you can take the Chuo rapid line (Orange trains) to the nearest transfer station (Yotsuya or Ochanomizu) and then transfer to the local Sobu line (Yellow trains) for the final few stations. [See the JR East map of Tokyo train lines (PDF) for more details.]