By a small accident I started joining the morning radio calisthenics at the local park, and the other day I was finally certified as an instructor recognised by the National Radio Calisthenics Federation!

I never knew radio calisthenics had a qualification for it — but going every day with a smile, one of the long-time local members spoke to me, and it started with them giving me the uniform for it.

Radio calisthenics apparently has around 90 years of history behind it, and most of the people active in this area are in their seventies and eighties.

Which makes me the “young one” here (laughs). Every morning I get to hear all sorts of stories from the past, and the time putting things away afterwards has become something I look forward to.

Right in the middle of Tokyo, in an age of shrinking families and thinning ties with neighbours and community, I think I have been given a genuinely precious connection.

In a park where different flowers bloom through all four seasons, hearing “that flower there is called such-and-such, Komo-chan” or “back in the day …”, I find myself full of gratitude for the people who came before us and built the Japan we have now.

Older people are like this, young people are like that — of course values shift with the times, and things once taken for granted are not always taken for granted any more.

But I think: it is because these people are here that the Japan of today exists, and that I get to be here now. Thinking that, going to greet this long history of radio calisthenics with a smile and a good morning has become something I enjoy.

Lately, working towards the great challenge of my life, I have early-morning jobs and cannot make it as often as I would like — but there are people in the community waiting for me all the same.

I wonder how so-and-so is doing today; I hope so-and-so, who has been away lately, is all right — feeling that way about people in the community, and knowing there are people who feel that way about me too, is a real happiness.

“Komo-chan! Look, I found a lucky four-leaf clover! Sharing a bit of luck with you.”

To the young people out there — let’s carry forward the radio calisthenics handed down by those who came before us!