Stamina and Spirit | Masaru Tomita (Dean, Faculty of Environment and Information Studies)
2006.08.24
There are some adults in the world who, despite their age, believe they are still young and in the "prime of their youth." To be honest, I am one of them. I still think of myself as a "young person," or rather, a "boy."
I'm the one who gets most fired up at student bowling and table tennis tournaments. I can't win if there are former members of the bowling or table tennis clubs, but otherwise, I usually end up winning. Incidentally, I'm an amateur at both bowling and table tennis (I've never seriously played them in a club), so you could say it's a victory of spirit rather than skill.
Also, during the entertainment portion of last year's lab retreat, there was a memory game tournament involving memorizing numbers, and I tenaciously fought my way to victory. At 48 years old, beating students—isn't that pretty amazing? Younger people usually win this game. So, just making it to the finals was already a huge upset, but when I defeated Nozomu Yachie, a first-year master's student, in the final round, the applause from everyone didn't stop for a full minute. :-)
As we age, the decline of "physical strength" due to aging is unavoidable for humans as living beings, but competitions are interesting because you can compensate for it with "spirit," "strategy," and "tenacity."
However, there's always someone better. At the SFC faculty and staff bowling tournament held last month, I lost the championship by a narrow margin after Professor Mitsuo Sasaki made a comeback at the last minute. Professor Sasaki is a good twelve years older than me. I had several chances to pull away during the game, but he was a truly tough opponent, stubbornly sticking close by getting one spare after another. And then, right at the very end, he got a "tenacious" double, and I suffered a comeback defeat.
Professor Sasaki is truly amazing. I take my hat off to him.
(Date posted: 2006/08/24)