...five-year-olds were smarter than me

Let me start this off by saying that I have no idea how to pluralize the word 'abacus' in English - so you guys just have to bear with me as I go through one of the most embarrassing and humiliating experiences of my life. Let's just call it 'that f***ing soroban event'. Because that's how I always refer to it now. In fact, I cannot say the word 'soroban' (Japanese for 'abacus') without uttering some sort of curse. 

Let me give you some backstory here. It was my fist semester in Chukyo and the international center was constantly trying to recruit us for different events. Cultural exchange events, the school festival and so on. One day I was sitting in the international center, minding my own business, when one of the workers approached me with an offer. There was this event where people would learn how to use the abacus and maybe have a fun little competition and get some sort of prize in the end. They wanted some international students to represent the school. 'It will be fun,' they said, 'It's just a little mock-competition with small prizes. You just have to show up and act interested. You won't even have to do anything difficult and you might learn something. They will teach you how to use an abacus and if you get stuck you can always use a calculator. It's going to be a piece of cake!'. Okay, maybe those weren't the exact words they used but the idea was pretty much it. I wasn't really keen on the idea of participating because simple mathematics is one of my many weaknesses but I have a really hard time saying 'no' to people when they ask me nicely... Somehow they managed to talk me into it and before I knew it I had agreed to participate... and then I realized it was to take place on a Saturday... Oh goody! 

The day before the event I decided to go to a party. Yeah, bad idea but it was a Friday night and I only had two drinks with me... The fact that I might have had a few shots of whiskey is irrelevant... Anyhoo, I didn't stay up too late and besides, I was fairly certain the even was only going to take like an hour or two. That's what the international center told us. Nothing to worry about - even if I was a bit hung over. 

So, on the day of the event I got up in time and headed downstairs. Soon we - me, Mary, Percy and Josh - were off to the city center for the abacus event. I'd thought there would be more of us but apparently the two other students who were thinking about joining us had changed their minds in the end. So it was just the four of us. I was feeling a bit slow and I had a minor headache but I felt like I was still up to the task. It was just a short little thing and I could rest as soon as I was done. 

We show up at the address the school gave us and it's a highrise with... a daycare on the first floor. Just a bunch of children running around and playing. We looked around for a while, confused. Sure enough this was the right address but... where were we supposed to go? I don't know how long we wandered about, trying to find somewhere to go but at some point one of the organizers showed up and led us to the elevator which took us to the correct floor... which wasn't that different from the first one. 

The first red flag was the sheer amount of kids. And I'm talking about really, really little kids. Like elementary school kids. Sure, there were also middle schoolers and high school kids and even a few adults but at least 90% of the contestants were underage. But that was a good thing, right? It just meant that the competition/learning event was supposed to be super easy. Right?

We were lead to a huge classroom where the event was supposed to take place. The room was filled with kids, sitting behind their tables all prim and proper... As we got seated one of the ladies in the organizing team walked up to us and asked:

'So, does everyone have their abacus with them?'

Uh... what? We exchanged a confused glance. No, everyone did not have their abacus with them. I'm pretty sure none of us even owned an abacus.

'But... we were told we didn't need them. That we would learn to use them here?' we answered meekly. 

The lady looked confused and shocked, as if someone had neglected to tell us the world was overrun by zombies. How could we show up without an abacus? Did we not realize what this even was? Nope, no we didn't. Because no one had told us... She went to talk with a colleague and soon enough we all had calculators, our 'exam sheets' and there was an abacus for each of us. The lady in charge of us gave us a quick ten-minute tutorial on how it works and how to use it. My head was pounding by that point and I barely understood any of it. So there were ones and tens and if the tens made up over a hundred then you needed to add... Uhhhh... it was way too much for me at that point. But I felt like I could probably handle some simple calculations.

The next red flag was the opening speech. Yes, there was a long, formal speech at the beginning that made me realize that I'd made a mistake.  This was not just some fun little 'mock-competition'. No, this was a real thing. Like they were trying to find the next Soroban Idol or something. Even last year's champion was there. And everyone looked pretty serious. We all had our little numbered sheets and we had to write answers to each problem they read out loud. Thankfully we, the foreigners, could use our calculators... so I was feeling pretty confident. And then it started.

'Twenty three plus seventy eight,' the guy in the front cried out.

Okay, that was easy. Let me just add the tens and move this thing on the abacus and then...

'One hundred and one minus sixty seven.'

Oh, that was fast. I wasn't even done with the last one. Let me just write down the answer to the first one and...

'Fifty five minus twenty one plus seventy two.'

You know what, I'm just going to use the calculator! You win, Japan! I don't know how to use the abacus! Happy now?

'Twenty thousand two hundred and thirty eight plus fifteen thousand and six minus ten thousand five hundred fifty six plus two hundred and one.'

.....

That escalated fast...

What was that first number again?

'Two million-'

Oh, really? Really?! You've got to be kidding me?!

'Five hundred million-'

My calculator only has six digits! I can't even type in the first number! It's just too long (that's what she said)! 

After realizing that I was up shit's creek without a paddle and floating in a sieve - they had given me a calculator that couldn't for the life of it handle the problems they were giving us - I decided to give up and see how everyone else was doing. The elementary schoolers were doing great: their little fingers moving around in lightning speed as they were doing their calculations, their little hands up in the air as soon as the announcer was done reading the problem out loud showing that they had gotten the answer. Meanwhile, I could see the souls of my fellow exchange students slipping out of their bodies only to be crushed by monstrous numbers and the harsh realization that these five-year-olds were smarter than all of us combined. My head really started to hurt now. 

Two hours later...

Not even kidding. We sat there for about two hours, slowly dying inside as they were angrily shouting out numbers, until they announced we could leave... Oh great! We could finally leave! Except...

'...and after lunch we start with round two.'

What? Round two? Lunch? You mean this horror show wasn't over? We approached one of the ladies in the organizing team and asked her how long round two would take. 'Oh, about two hours,' was her reply. Two... hours? Two more hours? We exchanged another look of despair and drew back into a corner to have a little crisis meeting. We could not handle another two hours of these genius preschoolers making us feel like morons. We needed a way out. In a few moments we devised a plan and approached the organizers, saying that we had to leave because the school was holding a speech competition and we had to practice our speeches and so on. We were pretty vague with the details but they bought it. They were also very sad to see us go. So before we left they got all of the higher-ups together and thanked us for participating and gave us all gift-bags and took photos with us and... well, basically it felt like we were attending some sort of award ceremony with people giving us stuff and shaking our hands. 'It was an honor to have you. What a pity you have to leave early. Here, take this. And here are your diplomas. And...' it went on and on as we tried our best to look serious and sad about leaving. 'Oh yes, we're really very sorry,' we mumbled as we inched closer to the elevator, 'We're very sad we have to leave but the speech thing... So very sorry for this... We appreciate everything you taught us...'

After a long and painful farewell - that made us feel like the biggest bastards in the whole world - we got into the elevator and pushed the button for the first floor. Even as the doors were closing the organizers were waving, bowing and thanking us for our participation in the event. As soon as the doors had closed and the elevator started moving we all burst out laughing. Don't get me wrong: we felt like shit for lying to them and sneaking away but just the sheer absurdity of the situation was hilarious. Us being tricked into participating in a math competition, us basically running away halfway through, the super awkward way they sent us off and even the gifts we got - it was all just insane. To this day I cannot look at an abacus without remembering how a bunch of kids were smarter than me. I guess it's a good thing the abacus is considered outdated in Europe.