I could keep doing it because it was "the wrong thing to do."
Do you go to the arcade 363 days a year purely because you wanted to play games? Or did you set yourself such a task?
Umehara:Hmmm, what was that about? It wasn't that I decided to go every day. On typhoon days, for example, there were no people at the arcade. I wonder why I went there when there were no people there (laughs).
Do you have to play the game every day or will you lose your skill?
Umehara:I thought that my fighting game skills were maintained because I played when other people were not playing. So I guess I had the feeling that if I stopped going even for a day, the magic would be broken. At the same time, I felt a little proud of myself for getting so fired up and doing something every day that was a waste of time and something I would have to stop doing someday.
It must be quite an accomplishment to do one thing for 363 days and 8 years.
Umehara:I realized recently that I was able to do it because I was "not supposed to do it". I was always a child who did not listen to my school teachers or parents. For example, when they would say things like, "If you do this, it will help you in the future," I would say, "What's the point of being useful? Even if you do that and your life turns out well, it's no fun. I finally realized at my age that I am a person who is motivated by people who say, "That won't do you any good in the future.
Still, you quit the game at one point, thinking about the future.
Umehara:Yes, I did. I quit the game and started playing mahjong as a way to make a living. At that point, I didn't have the education or work experience to be accepted in society, so I didn't think I would be able to find a decent job. I also thought that I was still just barely old enough to challenge myself, and that the world of competition might be a good fit for me. After about three years, I was able to win as much as I wanted to, but I couldn't continue any longer.
Why is that?
Umehara:In mahjong, there are losers. Of course there are winners and losers in games, but in a game center, your opponent is on the other side of the cabinet, so you can't see what they are doing. In a tournament, everyone is a loser except for one winner, so you don't have to worry so much about the losers. But in mahjong, for example, you can directly see the attitude of a person who is getting worse and worse as he or she loses.
We have to face each other around the mahjong table.
Umehara:I couldn't stand that. There is always competition in the world, and everyone is beating someone at some point, but you don't have to look at the loser. In that sense, mahjong is special; you have to look directly at the loser. When I was losing, I was fine with it because I was thinking, "Next time I will win," but when it came time to be on the winning side, I realized that I could not live my life looking at people who were losing. So I quit mahjong and got a job as a caregiver, but in the end I ......
You said you were coming back to the game.
Umehara:When I was around 27 or 28 years old, a friend invited me to go play the new "Strike II" series, which was coming out for the first time in 10 years. But for my part, I was concentrating on my nursing job at the time, and it gave me a sense that I was finally integrating myself into society. In other words, it was a time when my body was getting over its addiction to video games, and I thought, "This is my last chance to get back into society. However, my friend was so insistent that I decided to go to the arcade just once, and I was able to win a lot. I won, and it was fun.
Oh.
Umehara:After I stepped away from the game, I had about two and a half to three years of training in mahjong, and in caregiving, although I found it rewarding, I made a lot of mistakes because I was a beginner. In short, during the 3 to 4 years I was away from games, I had to live with the realization that I was a useless person. Then I tried playing games for the first time in a long time, and even though I had blanked out and didn't feel like it, I was able to win. That's when I finally realized that there was one thing, one thing that was special about me, and I didn't want to pretend that I didn't have this skill. As I mentioned earlier, I am either a "do it to the hilt" or "don't do it at all" kind of person, in other words, I used to think in terms of 100 or 0, but for the first time I felt that it was okay to do games as a hobby with a feeling of 40 or 50.
