This one was fun. I had been attending the local sports center, joining in on some fairly informal 'kyudo' (archery) lessons, after reading 'Won't you try Archery?' in the city office monthly newsletter. Akiyama-sensei was our instructor, and he was a pretty serious guy. I guess he put up with our group as something that 'couldn't be helped', knowing that we helped pay the bills for the fairly elaborate archery facility that was attached to the sports center. We tried not to disappoint him, but ... archery is tough!

It turned out that his daughter worked in the media field. I guess he had been talking to her one evening at home, telling her about his latest crop of 'students', including me, and she decided for some reason to follow up ... She came over to my workroom to see what I was up to, pitched some kind of proposal to her bosses at the Mainichi media organization, and within the month, I was featuring in a movie newsreel that played in theaters around the country, and ... this little photo-op story, which ran on the front page of the _national_ edition of the Mainichi Shimbun, one of Japan largest newspapers. Thanks for the tip, Dad!