The beginning of a story.

Sometimes I wonder what my life would have been if I'd never had discovered go. I'd have spent so much time doing other things, I'd have totally different friends. As you could guess these are pretty nostalgic days. I think about my life and what's sure is that Go is a fundamental part of it.

I was born 23 years ago in a wonderful city in the south of France called Marseille (if you've been there you know what I mean, if you haven't then you could never understand). For more than 16 years I lived perfectly without even knowing the existence of this game. I was pretty fond of Japan and japanese culture and eventhough I loved mangas and animes, I'd never heard of it until the beginning of March 2003. It was my last week of school before going to Japan with an international organism called AFS and with wich you can go abroad for a school year or shorter. My japanese teacher told me a go pro was coming to school a week later on a tuesday (since then tuesdays became really important days in my life for it was the day marseille's go club was reuniting). I told her I didn't even know what go was and she was shocked such a manga fan as me haven't read hikaru no go already. Having a lot of free times I went on the internet and read all the mangas in a few days! I really loved it and even started to learn the rules with "Mon ami Dédé", a very good french tutorial wich you can find there: www.jeudego.org (unfortunately it exists only in french).
I started to play a little bit in small go boards on yahoo games! And you know what? I loved that game. I played almost every free minutes I had.
A week later I went back to my school, met a few friends and finally Yasuda Yasutoshi 9P. He was acompanied by Shigeno Yuki 2P and Pierre Audouard 5D. Yasuda sensei is a really nice guy who thinks go is universal and can help everyone in a different way. Before coming to our school he went to a lot of different places such as psychatric hospitals and kindergaten.
He was a good player but never wrote about go as such but as a communication tool. For him go is just a different way to express things and you don't need to speak to make people feel something. Later on, I was to discover what he meant.
Yasuda sensei is a real show man! After having explaining the basic rules we started playing all together against him on a 9*9 . But he had more than one trick up his sleeve and played blind. Without looking at the go board.
Anyway, I was really sad because after my whole week of playing I wasn't a full beginner and it frustrated me seeing our "team" pushing a shicho until the end.
I talked to Yuki san a lot after and she told me they were going to the go club the same night and that it would be much more interesting. So I just went there and I discovered a whole new world. When I was younger (from 5 to 8) I used to play chess, I was used to quiet places where people where thinking a lot. Well, Marseille's go club wasn't exactly the same. First of all, it was in a bar. Second of all, most of the people from the go club where singing a song a capella. I thought I was at the wrong place but just before going home I met an asiatic guy with a toast tray. He asked me if I was here for go and proposed me some. Then introduced me to everyone in the go club. I was officially a go player.

For best and for worst, until death I am and always will be a go player.