In 2025, I Thought About Life From Two Very Different Accomplishments

（日本語版あり）

Below is the letter that I enclosed in this year’s Christmas cards.

I hope this letter finds you well.

This year, I am thrilled to report on two major accomplishments.

First, I achieved the rank of shodan in shogi (Japanese chess).  For those who are familiar with martial arts, this is equivalent to first-degree black belt.  It’s enough of an achievement that the Japan Shogi Association issued a certificate which officially certified me as such.  

This isn’t just any certificate.  It’s signed personally by the president of the Shogi Association as well as holder of the most prestigious Meijin and Ryuo titles.  When I received the certificate, these positions were held by Yoshiharu Habu and Souta Fujii, the two most accomplished professional shogi players over the last three decades.  It’s extraordinarily difficult to obtain signatures of these legendary pros (much less addressed to me), so I’ll be treasuring the certificate for a long time. 

Importantly, shodan is the rank at which shogi players generally get accepted as a decently-strong player.  For this reason, it’s an important milestone for those who play shogi, and I’m no exception.  It’s quite special to have achieved something that I can be proud of for the rest of my life.  

The second accomplishment relates to my work.

The company I work at hosts a major tech event every year.  This is a large-scale event in which nearly 70,000 people participate, including those online.  At the event, there are multiple breakout sessions with a couple hundred people in the audience, and this year, I was given the opportunity to speak at one of those sessions.

Many of the attendees of the event are engineers, so it’s highly unusual for a person in the legal department to speak there. In fact, it appears I was the first person ever.  My company’s legal department has a couple hundred people around the world and similar events are held in many countries throughout the year, so it’s quite a privilege to become a “world’s first” in anything at the company.

Achieving shodan in shogi and speaking at the tech event are both accomplishments of a lifetime, but they are markedly different in nature.  I’d long been told that shodan is something that anyone can achieve with time and effort.  Lo and behold, I achieved it by taking classes every week and playing matches in a smartphone app every day over a course of several years.  Conversely, becoming a speaker at the tech event is something I never dreamed of doing, yet it suddenly came together.  Once the opportunity came my way, it was several months of full steam ahead in order to cross the finish line.

In life, there are accomplishments that take little-by-little over many years, and there are those that you jump on in an impulse and accomplish by going with the flow.  2025 was a blissful year in which I got to experience both, but it’s still fresh in my memory that 2024 was a frustrating year in which many things didn’t go well at all.

It’s often said that life has ups and downs, and I’ve certainly experienced that over the past two years.  I don’t know what’s in store for 2026, but whatever happens, I plan on continuing to challenge myself with the hope that it will lead to meaningful accomplishments.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.