Kunio Yonenaga

Hey,

Consolation to the president of Japan Shogi Association (JSA), and one of the greatest Shogi player of all time, Kunio Yonenaga.

http://www.shogi.or.jp/player/kishi/yonenaga.html

May his soul rest in peace. Hope the future Shogi players will take some time to look over his kifu and be amazed at his magnificent gameplay and great Shogi sense.

Regards,
Ryou Takehito

A New and Fresh Start!

Hey all,

Wow. I can't believe it's been more than a year since I've updated my blog! It feels really ashamed that I haven't put any efforts into updating it!

Eventhough I've been hiatus for a long time, all this time I'm still paying attention to Shogi news, play Shogi games in my phone and even practice few tsume problems. Although it still saddens me that I might not have the strength of 2-dan anymore (unless someone's willing to spark the fire in me once again. lol).

To be honest, I'm going to graduate soon and my life will be move into the working society once I graduated.  Now that I have a serious love relationship, it's really time for me to think about working hard in my career and create a beautiful family with my girlfriend. lol.

Anyways enough about my personal life. Now let's talk about Shogi. Before I begin, I would like to thank all the readers out there for supporting me and have some faith with me. Now that I'm approaching my "working life", I'm sad and depressed that I had to forsake the dream of becoming a professional (although I am still seriously considering of becoming a teaching professional in my later life. lol). If I were single, I would definitely move to Japan after my studies in Melbourne and try to aim for the top. But as a Chinese (I'm not Japanese, mind you! lol), it is in my nature to be responsible to take care of my family (including potential future family members.). Also as a man, I cannot bear the thought of abandoning my family so I can pursue my dreams in Japan. There are always sacrifices in having a relationship, and I'm sure I won't regret this decision.

To be frank with everyone, I did not create this blog to be famous. The main reason why I created this blog is because I want to express my love and experiences in Shogi. The posts are also created to serve as a self-reflecting journal, so that if one day I looked back at all my past blog entries I would reminisce the good old times and also how I could further improve my skills. The secondary purpose of this blog is to share my experiences with everyone in the world. I want people to feel the joy and love that I've felt from Shogi and hope that others could start playing Shogi to enjoy it. As a normal person, I want to show people the proof that you can improve your skills in Shogi if you worked hard, like I did. I sometimes would get comments from people that I'm a prodigy or I'm a genius that's why I'm so good at Shogi. I was never good at chess (or any other variations) in my whole life! I'm not exactly a bright student either in my studies too (average about 65%). I want people to see that the sole reason why I got strong in Shogi is because of effort, time, hard-work and passion that I've put into learning Shogi and as a result I improved my skills. If a normal average person like me can become  a Dan player, I believe you can do it too. It wasn't an exaggeration that I used to spend at least 8 hours per day every single day reading Japanese Shogi books, which I don't understand most of the Japanese words (although I only knew how to read the kifus. lol).  Anyways, I am still trying my best to improve my skills (as I really love playing against tough opponents), but not for the sake of becoming a professional. I just want to improve my skills as much as I could.

Shogi definitely has a major impact in my life that I really hope I could return the favor. Therefore, in this post, I would like to discuss that from this post onward, future blog posts will not be solely focusing on my Shogi experiences. I will start interviewing people about their Shogi experiences and how it had impacted their life. I would also review Shogi books (if I have the chance to complete them in a short time), and I 'might' post about my afterthoughts of current professional games. However, I will not post about latest Shogi news as I believe Takodori (http://shogi.typepad.jp/eweblog/) and Yamajunn (http://yamajunnshoginews.blogspot.com.au/) has covered up the news very well. I usually read latest news from their blogs and I certainly do not want to take all their credit and post their news in my blog. I am highly interested in sharing my Shogi friends' experiences, especially Shogi promoters, so that in the future people could easily look for their contact information. I really think that they should take credit for spending alot of time and effort to promote Shogi in their country (or state) and yet does not gain the recognition they deserve.

Here's a summary of the topic I will covered in future blog posts:

1. Personal Shogi experiences

2. Advertisement of Shogi events (depending on where I'm currently located)

3. Interviews of Shogi players (especially promoters, or inspiring players)

4. Shogi book reviews and thoughts

5. Shogi improvement suggestions for beginners (won't be posting much about this)

6. Personal views and thoughts about interesting Shogi articles

7. Personal thoughts about current professional games (not sure I will be doing this or not)

Thanks for reading and I hope to see you again in the next post!

Yoroshiku Onegaishimasu!

Regards,

Ryou Takehito