In Japan, there is a place and time for geeks: ping-pong club, after school.

I imagine these to be the same people creating the demand for women's used underwear vending machines, but it's hard to tell at this point, which is to say pre-pubescent. For now they're thrilled to be playing ping-pong, three hours a day, five days a week, except on weekends when they hit the road in the ping-pong bus. Oh, the stories I've heard coming out of the ping-ping bus. It's enough to make your hair curl.

I remember when I was a reporter for the Melfort Journal, I had an assignment to cover the provincial ping-pong tournament being held in the Melfort Collegiate gymnasium. Talk about intense. There was this one team, a pair of forty-something single farmers from The Pas, Manitobia, who were all business. Except in the back, where they were gettin' down.

Anyway, these ping-ponging farmers were donning some pretty deadly Coke bottle glasses - you know the kind you can push up with your cheeks when they slide down your nose? - and missing teeth. Don't even ask how you end up missing teeth playing ping-pong. Could it be from all the pop you drink playing Dungeons and Dragons between games? As it turns out, these two winners really were winners: provincial champions a bazzilion years and counting, national finalists just as many times. I forget if they won nationals or not. I suppose you could phone the Melfort Journal and ask if you really wanted to know. "Um, yeah, this is Joanna Sookocheff. My son worked for you a while back and I was just wondering about that ping-pong story he did about the national champions. Could you look up for me if they really did win nationals or not? Thanks."

The funny part about these dudes was that they did ping-pong as a hobby during the winter. They blew all their dough driving around western North America in the winter. Or, as they put it, "We do farming in the off season. It keeps us in shape." I ended up talking to them for half the day, and not once did I cease to be amazed by the purity of their geekiness. It was mezmerizing to see people so addicted to something so stupid. Mezmerizing and beautiful.

Back to Japan.

Aside from the one cool kid who only proves that there is an exception to every rule, the ping-pong club is dominated by chubby, dim-bulb kids whose hand-eye co-ordination would be the envy of even Spiderman. They wear their pants too high, their glasses sit crooked on their face, they sweat too much, their parents don't buy them cool shoes and they trade Dungeons and Dragons cards at noon-hour. Poor guys (and one girl, who has to be the saddest sack who ever pulled on a pair of pants in the morning). At least they have one another, and the ping-pong coach, who cheers for them no matter what.

Every once in a while I go down to the gym and have a match against aforementioned cool kid. He gets bored whooping my ass after about ten minutes and ends up pitting me against one of the first year kids, or even worse someone from the girls volleyball team. Then, when they get tired of whooping my ass, I go shoot hoops with my buddy Ryo, captain of the basketball team. Now he's cool.