A large-scale typhoon attacked Tokyo on the night of Wednesday, 7 October, and Thursday morning, playing havoc with to the morning rush hour on the trains. That was good news for school and college students, who benefitted from cancelled classes, but not for workers, who had to make an effort to get to work by whatever train lines were running.
Among the latter were go professionals, for whom Thursday is the main playing day. It was presumably too late for games to be rescheduled. Current tournament rules give players leeway of only one hour for late arrivals, after which they forfeit the game. Time deducted from the time allowance up to one hour is also tripled.
Games start at 10 a.m. Mimura Tomoyasu was 14 minutes late for his Honinbo League game, but he still managed to win it. In more serious trouble was Cho Chikun, who lives in Chiba Prefecture, next to Tokyo. When his usual train stopped, he switched to a number of different lines and somehow made it to Ichigaya just before 11. His troubles weren't over, however, as he thought his game was being played on the 6th floor, the main playing venue for professionals. Actually it was scheduled for the special playing room on the 7th floor. Cho had taken his shoes off for the Japanese-style playing room on the 6th floor; when he realized his mistake, he rushed up barefooted to the Western-style 7th floor. He made it with just three minutes left on his clock. Nothing daunted, he played the game in byo-yomi and won it. （His opponent was Kono Takayuki 7-dan, and the game was in Preliminary A of the Tengen tournament.）
Surprisingly, there were only four forfeits in 41 games.
It's amazing that Cho Chikun won the game under the time pressure and to see that most players came to play their games even when a typhoon attacked!! What a spirit :)
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