My Trip to the Butterfly Dohjo

This summer I went to Japan to train at the Butterfly Dohjo along with Anders Truelson from Minneapolis, MN, Aldis Presley from Atlanta, GA, and Derrick Poon from San Francisco, CA. Anders’ father, Coach Thor Truelson, accompanied us. We all had a great time and hope that we can have another opportunity like it.

Dohjo players, L-R: Coach Yoshi, author Ashwin Peres-da-Silva, Anders Truelson (front), Thor Truelson, Derrick Poon and Aldis Presley.

Arrival: On July 7, I departed from the RDU airport to Detroit as an unaccompanied minor. I was met there by one of the airport attendants who took me to the room for unaccompanied minors. There Mr. Truelson and Anders met me and took me to lunch. After lunch we went looking for Aldis Presley who was flying in from Atlanta. When we found him, we all went to our gate and waited for our flight to board. We didn’t meet Derrick yet because he was at the U.S. Open and was flying to Japan the next day. Our plane was a humongous 747. It wasn’t very crowded so Anders and I sat together while Aldis sat by himself and Mr. Truelson sat behind us. During the plane ride there were a couple movies that were pretty good. When the movies weren’t playing I dozed in and out of sleep. Two meals came on the plane, dinner and breakfast. In between them they gave us little snacks. Anders and I ordered a box of Toblerone chocolate from the Duty Free "shop" on the plane. We hurriedly ate our first bars and then decided it would be wise to save the rest for the trip. The rest of the flight went well until the landing. My stomach started to hurt very badly but I sucked it up for the time being and got off the plane. We had to get through security and immigration to get our luggage and get out of the airport. We got tickets for a bus that would take us to Kio Plaza, where we would meet Ms. Konishi, the person taking care of us. That was when I first started getting sick. The bus ride was really long and I was already sick from the airplane so I got a little sick on the bus.

At Kio Plaza we met Ms. Konishi. She got a cab to take us to the Butterfly Dohjo where we would be staying. There we met Coach Yoshi and Sakai San, who was a very funny man who worked for Butterfly. They took our luggage upstairs and showed us our room. Once we got our beds set up, Ms. Konishi showed us where everything was. For the rest of the night, Anders, Aldis, and I went down to the Dohjo to hit around. We finally got to sleep late at night and started our first day of training the next day.

Normal Day: For the rest of the trip we followed a schedule that was mainly the same. Every day we would get up at 7:00am and run in the Dohjo for 15-20 minutes. After running, sometimes we would do footwork drills for a couple minutes and then go right to serving until 8:00. When we completed that, we would first go back to our room and then go to the bakery close to us for breakfast (bread). After breakfast, we would rest until 9:00 where we would go to the stretching session with all the Butterfly employees. After stretching, we would get ready to go to our first training session with Coach Yoshi at 9:30. We would practice until 12:00 and then go eat lunch in the cafeteria in the basement. After lunch we would rest in our room until the next session at 2:30. We played until 5:00, when our day was officially over. We usually ate dinner around 6:30 to 7:00. After dinner we would go down the street that we always ate at and explore some of the stores. Finally around 8:00 we would head back to our room and lounge until we fell asleep.

Training: Training was very intense and hard. In the morning session we would usually start out with footwork drills and work our way into multi-ball with Coach Yoshi. Coach usually taught us something new every couple days so we had to focus really hard to keep up with what we were being taught. Multi-ball was intense but relatively fun. We were worked very hard and did a variety of drills. When we weren’t doing multi-ball with Coach, we would do different drills with our partner (mine usually being Anders). Every day was something new and exciting. I have to say that the one thing I improved on the most was my backhand loop. Coach Yoshi had a lot of patience for us when we couldn’t quite understand how to do something at first. He was a great coach and knew a lot about the game. The afternoon session was probably the more intense of the two sessions. We did multi-ball or drills with the new strokes that we had been learning. Sometimes we would play some matches in the afternoon with the Meiji players who came to practice with us. Meiji is the university that Yoshi coaches. One weekend a junior high school came and we trained with them for a while. They were good competition for us. The training was great and I feel like I am a lot better now.

Special Events: Besides table tennis, I did many other fun things in Japan. Occasionally we would take the subway to downtown Tokyo, which was the most amazing place ever. There were so many lights and people. There were all sorts of different foods. They had arcade rooms and even gambling places. It was very crowded and busy. We had lots of fun walking around the streets. Of all the days, we had three days set aside for us to do fun things. The first of the days the Butterfly Corporation took the whole company and us out on a restaurant boat. It sailed around Tokyo Bay. It was so much fun because we got to eat lots of food and look out at Tokyo Bay from on the ship. When the boat finally docked, we went to the hot springs. Once you got inside the place there were many things that you could do. They had food, games, and of course, the hot springs. You had to go in naked so we all decided that we didn’t want to go. Outside though they had small pools where you could put your feet in. We finally went back to our room and the day came to a close. The next fun day we had we went sightseeing with Ms. Konishi. The first stop was Tokyo Tower, where we went up as high as they would let us. You could look down and see a lot of Tokyo city. Our next stop was the Imperial Gate. It is where the Emperor lives. We went up as close as we could get until we weren’t allowed to go any farther. The last stop was Asakusa, which is a holy place that people come to pray to Buddha. There was incense and places where you could throw in coins and pray. It was a very tiring but fun day. The last fun day Coach Yoshi took us to watch Japan and Korea play in a friendship match. They had top players from each country play. It was extremely exciting to watch. At the end I got Kim Took Soo’s and some other players’ signatures. It was a very fun day.

Butterfly Company: The Butterfly Company was extremely generous to us. They showered us with many gifts including clothes, shoes, racket cases, towels, shoe cases, bags, and many more things. They paid for all of our special events and our accommodations. All of us are very grateful to them for everything they did for us.

Cost: The total trip cost my parents about $2000, which included airfare, meals and a quarter of Coach Truelson’s expenses.

Afterward: On the last day of the trip, we went to everyone that worked at the Butterfly Corporation and thanked him or her for everything. One of the Butterfly employees drove us to Kio Plaza where we took a bus to the airport. Derrick departed back to his home in California and Mr. Truelson, Anders, Aldis, and I flew back to Detroit for the AAU Junior Olympics. The first night I stayed with the Truelson’s, and after that I met up with Coach Dan Seemiller and his South Bend juniors. I stayed with them until the tournament was over. I stayed with my dad’s cousin the last night and then the day after that I flew back home on August 2. Japan was a great experience for me and I know that I’ll never forget it.