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It was the middle of the night.
I had my phone open, under the covers.
I tapped, without really thinking, on a video that came up in my recommendations.
Someone was playing the guitar.
Fingers running over the strings at an unbelievable speed.
As if it were easy.
As if it were fun.
The sound kept playing in my earphones.
Before I knew it, I had watched three in a row.
The next morning, I picked up the guitar leaning in the corner of my room.
I pressed a chord.
Nothing rang.
My fingertips hurt.
The strings were stiff.
That person in last night’s video, and me, now.
Suddenly I could see the distance between us.
I quietly leaned the guitar back against the wall.
On the weekend, we had hot pot at a friend’s place.
My friend was cutting napa cabbage with a practiced hand.
The rhythm of the knife was steady, and pleasant.
The smell of dashi spread through the kitchen.
“I watch a lot of cooking videos,” my friend said.
On the way home, I passed a convenience store.
My face was reflected in the glass.
There are people who are good at cooking.
There are people who are good at guitar.
So what am I good at?
The thought just came to me.
The good ones are too close
Open your phone, and the world’s “good ones” are lined up in a row.
Guitar, cooking, dancing, drawing.
With every flick of the thumb, someone’s finished form scrolls past.
That in itself is wonderful, I think.
But I can’t help setting myself, just starting out, beside that person on the screen.
I never meant to compare.
But my brain does it on its own.
The feeling of “I’m bad at this” is already sitting there, before I’ve even begun.
They had that day, too
But let me stop for a moment and think.
The person playing so lightly in that video had nights, too, when the chords wouldn’t ring.
Days when their fingertips hurt too much to hold down the strings.
Surely there were nights they thought, “Maybe this isn’t for me.”
Every top pro in the world was a beginner once.
No one is good from the very start.
One Friday night.
A friend invited me, and I walked into a pool hall.
When the door opened, cool air touched my cheeks.
The lights shone only on the tables.
From some table, the sound of a ball dropping into a pocket — tok.
At the back, someone who looked like a regular was coolly potting ball after ball.
The smooth motion of the cue.
At the table beside theirs, I was handed a cue.
It was heavier than I thought.
I tried getting down on a shot.
I couldn’t really tell where to put my hand.
I shot.
The ball rolled off somewhere I never expected.
My friend laughed.
I laughed too.
But I was a little embarrassed.
It felt as if the person at the next table was watching me.
You’re not being watched as much as you think
To be honest, you’re not being watched as much as you think.
The people in a pool hall are facing their own tables.
Facing their own balls.
Focused on their own challenges.
Even if someone at the next table miscues, they don’t mind.
Because they were like that once, too.
Miscues, balls flying off in absurd directions — they’ve been through all of it.
So no one laughs at a beginner.
Not in any decent pool hall, at least.
That night, I played about three games.
Almost nothing went in.
But there was one ball that dropped into the pocket just as I’d aimed.
Tok.
The same sound I’d heard earlier from the regular’s table.
“Oh!” said my friend.
That one ball alone was somehow enough.
Time when it’s fine to be bad
Missed.
Laughed.
Shot again.
Missed again.
In that repetition, something changes, little by little.
The ball that flew off in the wrong direction yesterday hit the corner of the pocket today.
That alone made me happy, somehow.
You can watch videos of the good ones anytime.
But the time when you’re bad at it is only now.
You don’t have to be embarrassed by that time.
Outside the hall, the night breeze was a little cool.
My friend and I walked to the station.
“Want to go again?” my friend asked.
“Yeah,” I said.
The tok of that one ball is still in my ears.
On the train home, I opened my phone.
A guitar video came up again.
But somehow it felt a little different from before.
That person must have had a first ball, too.
Bad at it, clumsy, embarrassed — even so.
Only those who played the first ball get to play the next one.
Maybe the people who get good are simply the ones who took one more shot.
👉 You’re not the only one who couldn’t keep it up.
👉 See the Yokohama Billiard Hall Guide
👉 Billiards resources from Japan and around the world, organized by purpose: Billiards in Depth (latest updated hourly)
