Welcome to my blog

This is my first real post. Now, honestly I'm not much of a blogging type of person - so who knows if I keep this up. But let's try this out and see how it goes!

Who am I?

My name is Paul - I'll omit my last name for now, although it's easy enough to find online from other sources. I'm a software engineer and former "site reliability engineer" or "cloud reliability engineer". For those who don't understand that: basically I'm a coder and do lots of other stuff with computers as my day job. But, outside of work I have a number of hobbies. Many of those hobbies don't last, and that's OK. But some do, and one of those hobbies is looking to be: the Japanese abacus, or soroban (そろばん).

My soroban history: It started with a YouTube rabbit hole...

I was reflecting on growing older, and making more and more mistakes in my work (and probably not just being more cognizant of such), and even making mistakes with arithmetic which seemed frankly embarassing. Having a lot of pride in my intelligence and mental ability, this was quite frustrating.

For some reason - I forget what it was that I searched for on YouTube, but I ran across this specific video:

This video is in Chinese, but someone uploaded this with English subtitles. And... basically my mind was blown.

It starts with kids doing a math competition - 5 digit times 5 digit multiplication. Immediately it cuts to the contestants writing the answer, apparently without writing any calculations out - totally in their head. How long did it take them? How much was cut for TV? I didn't know, but nonetheless it was impressive.

Then, division. 11 digits by 6 digits. Unconceivable to calculate mentally... yet with no cut in the video, in maybe 1 second the Japanese competitor starts to write their answer. Maybe this was as quick as the show made it look? Regardless - 11 by 6 digit division, surely that's exceptional to be able to do mentally; I couldn't even conceive of how to do so.

As I continued watching, it got more and more incredible. The Chinese child competitor is eliminated and replaced with an adult competitor, who defeats the Japanese child competitor, and is then replaced with an adult competitor as well. The kids were amazing, but the adults... were at a completely different level.

The questions got more and more ridiculous, to the point I was thinking "OK, this cannot be real, surely this is some sort of staged show or something." It was absolutely stunning that any human could be able to do this type of calculation that I seriously questioned what I was seeing.

The Japanese competitor won, after completing stunning problems such as 18 digit by 11 digit division. Even thinking of it now, that seems like it should not even be possible. But, little would I know that, while this level of performance may be extremely exceptional, it was very real. I'd find this out when I decided to read up about the winner of the competition, Hiroaki Tsuchiya.

"The Legend": Hiroaki Tsuchiya (土屋弘明)

I don't speak Chinese, so it was really hard for me to judge or look up things on the Chinese side. But, I can somewhat capable in Japanese, and Japanese things in general tend to catch my interest, so I decided to look into who this Hiroaki Tsuchiya person. And with this: the rabbit hole got even deeper.

No, I didn't see harder mental calculation problems - but instead I saw something that showed me that this was not merely a competition of mathematical savants or something like that - this was a result of dedicated training in a skill. And that there are many, many people who are capable of what I very recently would have considered only possible by savants.

(Sorry, only automatically-generated English subtitles on this one.)

I saw this video - a competition in high level, high speed arithmetic, with many people and not just a few people participating. I had no idea something like this existed. But what stood out was this: this was a competition for a Japanese word which I think I had heard before, but hadn't even thought would be the reason for this type of competition: "soroban". The Japanese abacus.

Abacus?! I knew that some countries still properly taught people to use the abacus, but my image was very US-centric: a basic counting "toy" used to teach 2-3 year old kids how to count, perhaps. I knew nothing about how it was actually taught in other countries, nor what that actually looked like.

But before that - Mr. Tsuchiya. This video focused a lot on him and his soroban journey. Sometimes being referred to as "the legend", in this video we can see him performing not just single extra large problems quickly, but doing tons of smaller-yet-still-large calculations in rapid succession, one after another, in a setting where very clearly there was no "TV magic" or fakery. This, was, real. He was a real competitor, and while he was exceptionally strong, there were many other competitors who also were close to him in ability as well - in other words, this was not a fluke, and many people are able to reach a high level in this skill.

But, he's doing this all in his head? And this is a soroban competition, but - many people aren't even using sorobans?!

As described at about 3:19 (my rough translation): "By the way, while this is a soroban competition, all the top competitors are doing anzan (mental calculation)."

Soroban and mental calculation

In a nutshell - what I found is: in Japan, the abacus is used to train this type of calculation, but at the highest level it transitions into mental calculation. One leads into the other.

And reading up, that's exactly what I read: how do they do mental calculation so quickly? It's by visualizing the abacus, by using a mental soroban in their head.

This seemed very difficult to imagine, and just hearing it, it sounds somewhat ridiculous and unbelievable.

But, I had seen too much to ignore this. I had to know... is this something I could pick up at even a very basic, rudimentary level? That could be a way to fight my perceived mental decline, to prove to myself that I still can grow and improve.

Beginning of self-studying the soroban

I was sold. I really wanted to give this a try. So, I asked around on Reddit about this, wondering about an appropriate abacus for adults. I would find out that this was an especially niche topic, at least on Reddit in English, and many people suggested I try learning with a suanpan, or Chinese abacus, which has larger beads and may be easier for an adult learner.

But ultimately, I opted to buy a good quality standard soroban based upon apparent online reputation. I ended up buying a Tomoe as it has a strong reputation among learners in Japan. (Specifically, this one, the Tomoe "Standard" 23-digit, model 43300.)

Are the beads small? Yes. Did I feel like maybe I made a mistake at first? Yes. But - as I wanted to stick with a Japanese abacus due to my cultural interest in the subject, I kept it and started practicing with it.

I searched for books to study from. First, at my local library I found a really old book from the 1960's: The Japanese Abacus: Its Use and Theory by Takashi Kojima. And... I worked through most of that book, and noted a few of its exercises for learning the movements of all the beads when doing basic calculations.

I also watched YouTube videos to try to figure out the fingering. Examples seemed somewhat inconsistent, but the Japanese resources tend to teach the fingering in what seemed an odd way (thumb to push "one" beads up, index finger for all other movements).

I found an old copy of an English soroban book online - I wasn't sure if this was a legal copy, but it looks like it was shared by the Osaka Abacus Association on their English page (Wayback machine link). While that site is no longer live, the link they shared still appears to work, so I will link it here. For those who want to learn the basics by themselves, this book could be a good free resource.

Anyway, I studied, it was interesting, but after I learned the basics... I put my soroban aside and didn't really touch it for months. It was doomed to be one of the many hobbies I pick up for a little while and then decide to drop.

A twist of fate: preparing to study at a soroban school in the US!

I was curious about classes here in the US - and there definitely are teachers. But in the Portland area I only found a few options, and I wasn't sure if any of them would take adults. Plus, I was concerned about cost (since I'd have to explain larger expenses to my spouse), and there was also my pride of "I can do this myself", or "this is just a hobby/experiment, I'm not that serious as to need a class".

But, at a 新年会 (shinnenkai, or "New Years Party"), during a pictionary prize competition among the 3 families attending, one of the prizes prepared was - a soroban lesson voucher which one family had received but had not used. I actually talked about the soroban practice I had experimented with in passing and it was mentioned that they had this certificate, so when I won a round and got a chance to pick a prize, I took a chance that I knew which prize had the voucher - and was right. This would allow me to cover the initial registration fee and first month of tuition for a local soroban school - and one recognized by the Soroban League of North America, as well! (This one, to be specific.)

Knowing very well that this is really intended to be a way in the door for new students - a significant discount, but one which for a successful student would likely be paid back from months of continued practice and continuing to go to the school - I decided that I wanted to go. And in my head - while the voucher was for free tuition for a month and I literally could have just gone one month and not paid a cent, that seemed very uncool to me. From the moment I applied I was planning to stay at least 2 months, possibly 3, unless it just absolutely did not click with me. I wanted to have a good chance to experience this, and then maybe quit studying midway through the year once I had at least a few good months under my belt.

So, I signed up. I would start attending in February of 2026, and in anticipation (and wanting to get my money's worth as much as I could), I got back into practicing the soroban. And with this - I decided to buy some self-study resources off of Amazon.

I bought 3 books. Two of them were "for adults" books on Abacus and Anzan, which I bought via Amazon Japan (shipped internationally). They were OK, but ultimately were not as useful to me... since I got most of what I wanted out of the 3rd book, which had a Kindle edition and which I started studying immediately.

For those following along for free or at least inexpensive resources, while this is fully in Japanese, the book I used was here: 図解でよくわかる！ そろばん入門ドリル 右脳が鍛えられ、イメージ力がつく！. I used this book and practiced up to approximately a 7-kyu level based upon the practice tests inside, and hit struggles with speed on the 6-kyu practice test - but that would prove to be a good starting point.

Next time: my experiences so far at an American soroban school!

I'm out of time to write today, so I'll leave it here. This may be somewhat raw, but if it is interesting to someone, great.

Until next time!