“Yes, I can!” – Unicycling at school

Forgetting about the misery at my third and fourth primary school, for now, let me share a very nice, memorable episode at my second primary school.

If I remember it correctly, it was called Yaguchidai Primary School (near Tokyo), and a key feature of the school was that half of the pupils could unicycle. Just to be clear, it wasn’t a specialist school in any way. It was a normal state primary school where kids who happened to live nearby could enter. To this date, I don’t know why unicycling was a big thing there.

When I first entered the school, my eyes were wide open. Pupils were unicycling on the playground, pupils were unicycling to school (which I don’t think was in line with the school policy!), and I hadn’t seen so many human beings (let along primary school pupils) unicycling in my life before!

“Oh, that looks so cool!” I exclaimed. “I want to be one of them!”

I persuaded my parents to buy a unicycle for me. Somehow they thought I’d be able to learn. Somehow my father, who doesn’t unicycle himself, took me to a nearby car park and taught me how to unicycle there. I fell over so many times that I had bruises somewhere or other on my body for quite a while, but somehow I learnt it within a couple of weeks.

At my best time, I unicycled with a couple of heavy bags on each of my hands and still managed to ride.