Parts 5 & 6 of Yukari Umezawa's Beginners' Videos

Yukari Umezawa's Videos: Parts 5 and 6

ShadowBakura has posted another two installments from the Go! Go! Igo! teaching segments of Hikaru No Go.

Part 5



Part 6


Mr. Kuroki's Go-Cart


Floor gobans; if we in the West had fatter wallets and were more comfortable playing on the floor, more of us might buy them. There seems to be a sharper click to one's stones when they smack upon thicker wood.

Mr. Kuroki of Kuroki Goishi Ten recently introduced a simple raised platform for folks that might want to use their floor gobans for chair-seated play.

The raised cart.

The cart again. Fully-loaded.

At 10,000 Yen (roughly US$87) it's an elegant means of getting dual-use out of a floor goban.It's wheeled so moving the goban around will be easy. The space on the bottom can be used to store the stones in their bowls.


More on Super Yunzi


I saw that Super Yunzi are now on the Yunnan Weiqi Factory's website as well. These are the same ones sold in the US by Yellow Mountain Imports. This set includes the 11.7mm stones, bowls, and the walnut storage box in the background. It sell for 2,800 Yuan domestically which translates into about US$360. Shipping to the US would probably be about $45 via surface freight.


It's not clear to me what needed to be done to achieve this thickness and how the manufacturing process changed. Pong told me that these stones have a shinier surface as opposed to the traditional matte texture of Yunzi. This is noticeable in the photo above.