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Is there a place you can drop into on your way home from work?
You haven’t arranged to meet anyone, but if you go, someone will be there.
You can spend the time alone in quiet focus, or, if a familiar face turns up, play together.
And when you’re done, talk over a drink. That kind of place is a billiard hall.
Alone, and still more than enough
There are few sports you can enjoy by going alone.
Tennis and golf don’t work without a partner.
You can go to the gym alone, but you just grind through it in silence.
Billiards is different.
At the table alone, you set up a layout, choose a challenge, and practice.
You focus before each shot and refine your cue ball control: that time belongs entirely to you.
Pool works as quiet time to face yourself.
👉 Put down your phone, pick up a cue. — Pool for a digital detox.
But before you know it, you’re playing with someone
While you practice alone, a regular comes in.
“Want to play a few racks together?” From that one line, friendships form naturally at a billiard hall.
You talk while you play a game.
Someone teaches you a technique.
Or you say nothing at all, and simply play together.
Even that alone makes for a comfortable time.
Go to the hall, and someone will be there.
Halls like that exist all across Japan.
Once you have friends, it opens up even further
Keep going for a while, and you’ll come to know faces.
From there, many people get together with close friends like a club, form a team, and join a league.
JCL (JAPAN CSI POOL LEAGUE) and JPA (Japan Pool Players Association) are leading leagues that amateurs can join.
They are set up so that anyone can enjoy them regardless of skill, and they serve as a doorway for those who want to enjoy pool as a sport.
JCL🔗 https://csi-pool.jp/
JPA🔗 http://www.poolplayers.jp/
Many halls offer lessons for beginners, so even people who want to “learn the basics first” can start with peace of mind.
Start alone, make friends, compete as a team: pool has that kind of natural widening.
Time for the mind, stimulating your thinking
Pool is an intellectual sport.
Backward thinking, spatial awareness, emotional control: thought is condensed into every single shot.
Spending time with people who enjoy this kind of game gives your thinking a good push, at work and in private life alike.
Talking with people who share a hobby can give rise to perspectives and ideas you never had before.
That is another richness that the quiet game of pool holds.
Youth is not a matter of age
Let me get a little philosophical.
There is a Japanese word for youth, “seishun.” It is written with the characters for “blue spring.”
Unripe, fresh, a little painful: that’s the image it carries, isn’t it?
It is often spoken of as if it were the privilege of the young.
But is that really so?
As we grow up, we begin, without noticing, to buy and sell the “spring” of our youth.
We buy time with money, and sell our feelings to reason.
Before we know it, the time we spend pouring ourselves purely into something grows shorter. A slightly lonely story, isn’t it?
But think about it.
To throw yourself into something, to have your heart race for something, to long for something. To cry over something, to laugh at something.
Not knowing how, and a little clumsy because of it. And still, in earnest, with everything you have, single-mindedly.
I think youth is that clumsiness, too.
If that is the essence of youth, age has nothing to do with it.
It’s true that youth is tied to being young.
But what is “being young”?
This very moment is the youngest you have ever been.
One second from now, you will be one second older.
Which means that you, at this very moment, are also the youngest you will ever be for the rest of your life.
Youth is not something in the past. It is always here, in this very moment.
Pool is a sport that young and old, men and women, can enjoy together.
It’s fine to play with a smile.
In a real match, it’s fine to rejoice, to be frustrated, even to cry.
Pros, amateurs and enthusiasts can gather around the same table and share the same feelings.
That is where youth is.
Enjoy it in the way that suits you
You are by no means obliged to belong to a community.
Enjoy it alone, in quiet focus.
Enjoy it playing a few racks with someone.
Enjoy it joining a league with friends.
None of these is the right answer; you can choose by how you feel that day. That is the generosity of pool.
To start, just drop into a billiard hall in Yokohama.
👉 See the Yokohama Billiard Hall Guide
