Published: Sat 01 August 2026
Updated: Sat 01 August 2026
By Paul
In Soroban .
tags: そろばん soroban abacus
The story so far
As described in my previous post , I started
self-studying the abacus in response to feeling that my mental sharpness was degrading and that I
seemed to be making more and more mistakes, and being more convinced that it wasn't just me noticing
my own mistakes more often. I was deeply impressed by some YouTube videos I saw
about extremely high level mental math, learned of the connection between that
and soroban (Japanese abacus) practice, and ultimately bought an abacus for myself
and did some self-studying. But as with many of my hobbies, it was a brief experiment that didn't
go particularly far - until I received the opportunity to practice the abacus at a local abacus
math school. This lead to another spike in self-studying - resulting in me reaching an unofficial
roughly 7-kyu level before entering formal classes.
During my self-studies, it was around the 6-kyu level where it seemed that, while
I could complete the practice exercises more-or-less, I was struggling to complete
problems within the allotted time during practice tests. And in particular,
6-kyu introduces long division, which went clearly beyond where I had prior
school-based training in mental math and thus really had to struggle with.
In other words - here is where I really was starting to feel like having guidance
could help me push through to higher levels; until this point the prior levels
seemed primarily an exercise in acclimating to the mechanical elements of soroban
practice, but from this point on it felt that I was legitimately struggling to
have my brain keep up.
At the same time - soroban classes do cost money. And while I had taken private
music lessons in the past at a higher price per hour than what I would pay for
soroban classes, the expectation of two classes per week and the lack of an
academic incentive for the classes did make me hesitate, even if I was curious.
Did I really want to make that kind of commitment? Was it really worth it to
me, and could I justify the expense to my spouse?
As I mentioned, at a New Years' Party I received a voucher for the school in
question - so it was a perfect chance to try it out and see if it was for me.
Yes - I knew there was a high chance that I would want to continue if I start.
But I had to at least give it a try.
My plan was to try classes for two, maybe three months - that way the school
would at least get something back for their time and effort in teaching me,
rather than simply benefiting from a free voucher and paying nothing.
...Ultimately, I would find that this experience would be something which I
would simply not want to give up.
Starting classes at my local abacus math school
I started taking classes formally in February, twice a week as described above,
one hour per session. To start out, I joined the beginners classes.
Now, it's true that I did not start as a total beginner due to my self-study,
and so my instructors were likely surprised by how quickly I would progress
through the beginner lessons. At first, I said nothing and just followed what
they told me to do. As it became obvious to myself that I would be continuing
past the initial first month, I did mention about my self-study and estimated
current level so they would better understand about why I was performing the way
I was. To be clear, this wasn't really with the expectation of special
treatment or "skipping ahead", but it seemed the instructors deserved an
explanation.
Anyway, while I had learned a number of things my own way through the various
resources I had studied, since I was going through the trouble and potentially
paying for ongoing lessons with this school, from the beginning I had this rule
in mind for myself: to not get in their way by second-guessing everything they'd
try to teach. If they had a different way, I would legitimately give it a go
and try it, if not outright adopt that methodology. I'm attending the school to
learn from them, so rather than trying to second-guess everything from an adult's
or software engineer's perspective, I would try as much as possible to adopt a
beginner's mindset and learn from them.
And I think I've stuck to this pretty well. They did have some different methods
of abacus fingering than I was used to; I tried and did adopt these even if at
first I wondered if they would really work for my big fat adult fingers. They
had different ways of doing multiplication and division than I had previously
studied from other soroban resources; I adopted their methods and saw immediate
benefit. None of this is to say that other methods would be invalid or wrong -
but I put my trust in the instructors of my school and very quickly saw benefit
from doing so.
Anyway, for February and March I attended the beginners classes. After that,
the main instructor for the advanced class, who had been also helping me in the
beginners classes and had been pushing me hard from the beginning - and taking
me seriously as an adult learner - after having me formally take the 7-kyu exam
and pass it, I was invited to join the advanced class from April.
Jumping in the deep end: the advanced class
I had to take a break in May due to a business trip, but for April, June and July
I have been regularly attending the mixed/advanced classes at my school.
It's been an interesting experience. While my classmates were generally rather
young children in the beginners classes, in the advanced class... It's still
mostly young children, just maybe a little further along in elementary school.
But they're not to be underestimated.
I'm more advanced than some despite my short time in the class, but that's actually
not so special and to be expected: I'm an adult with years of traditional math
training from school and also have the extra incentive of wanting to get my money's
worth out of the classes, whereas many of these students started soroban before they
even knew their times tables, and some even younger than that. But - while that gives
me a huge initial jump compared to the students, that only helps me so far. While I
have the benefits of the past few months under my belt in addition to my prior math
classes in school, the students around me have in some cases years of soroban practice
and have built up these arithmetic skills far beyond anything I possess. People talk
about "human calculators" - this is basically the human calculator classroom, and
the good students in this class outclass me by orders of magnitude . My abacus skills
are not bad - but I still have a ways to go to catch up to some of the students. And
as for anzan - I'm frankly behind, significantly so, compared to the higher level
students.
On that subject, let's talk about anzan a little bit.
(Anzan (暗算) is Japanese for "mental calculation".)
The good news here is: anzan was one of my goals, and I am now able to perform anzan
at a limited level - and legitimately using a mental abacus to visually transform
the numbers in my head to reach a solution to a given problem. I haven't
officially passed anything higher than 6-kyu yet, but I'm probably at a 4-kyu or
3-kyu level with my anzan. I would guess that an average adult can probably complete
the problems of the 6-kyu or 5-kyu exams without necessarily having abacus training
(or maybe with lighter practice); 4-kyu gets a little harder, and 3-kyu, my
current focus level, is probably pretty difficult to do for many people without
such visualization. I can do 2 digit times 2 digit multiplication mentally now,
e.g. 56 * 42, which would be 2,352. (Yes, I actually did mentally calculate this
to write this, and I checked it with a calculator afterwards and confirmed it was
correct.) In short - I've already gotten some real benefits from my practice as
I wouldn't have even attempted such a problem mentally before.
But if I compare myself to the more advanced students in the advanced class - there
is absolutely no comparison. I'm still struggling to do mental calculation of
multiple two-digit numbers, while the other students are doing multiple three, four, or more
digit numbers with few if any mistakes. Their anzan skills are developed enough that
on speed drills they often don't need to reach for the abacus for much of the assignment,
giving them a huge speed boost compared to someone using a physical abacus.
In short: I've made some good initial efforts, and I've worked my way through the
beginner material, but the advanced class is where the real work and the real
advances lie, and it's clear that I have a long way to go.
Pursuing this as an adult
The other students in the class are all doing this basically as a supplemental sort of
mathematics class outside of their normal school curriculum. Their reasons for doing
soroban may vary - some parents may see their kids struggling with math in traditional
classes, while others may want to give their kids a significant advantage over their
peers, while others may have their kids take these classes from a cultural perspective.
(I see kids of all ethnic backgrounds taking these classes, but certain ethnicities do
seem to be more prevalent, so I suspect it's a combination of these factors.) Regardless
of the reason, these students generally start these classes from early childhood, maybe as
young as 5 years old in some cases.
Then you have me - an adult,
impressed by some crazy YouTube videos ,
who has no academic reason to pursue this, but rather a combination of intellectual
curiosity and desire to protect and refine my intellectual ability as I go through
middle age, starting study from the age of 42 years old. (I'm now 43.)
It is an interesting dynamic - and while adult students are not unheard of in Japan, it is a minority,
and I only know of a few other adult westerners studying this based upon pages I've
found online and some Reddit posts. Maybe there's more people like me than I suspect,
but honestly I suspect I'm in a pretty small minority.
Nonetheless - I see significant benefit to doing this, and I am also simply curious - if I
keep this up, despite being an adult (which everyone says or implies is a significant
disadvantage compared to starting as a child) - how far can I go?
We'll see.
Anyway, that's enough for today. Until next time!