Loco Solare, the Japanese national team for the Beijing Olympics curling girls, will face the UK at 10:05 am (Japan time) with a gold medal. The team named by combining “Tokoro” and “Solare” has 3 out of 5 members (lead Yurika Yoshida, second Yumi Suzuki, third Chinami Yoshida) in Hokkaido. I’m from Tokoro Town, Kitami City. Introducing the sacred place, Tokoro.[Interview = Kengo Abe]
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Tokoro has a population of about 3,500. It is a small town facing the Sea of Okhotsk and Lake Saroma, where the cold of winter is severe.
Why did it become a sanctuary? Mr. Shigenori Suzuki, the chairman of the Tokorocho Curling Club, said, “I didn’t expect it to spread so much.” She said she felt that the Japanese with a stiff hip joint had a tight sinking posture.
The event happened in 1980 (Showa 55). It was a curling class held in connection with the sisterhood tie-up between Hokkaido and Alberta, Canada. Three people from the town also participated, one of whom was the late Yuji Oguri. He was immediately fascinated and started to move. The first is the corner of the outdoor skating rink. He buried the yarn in ice to make a house, and the stone used a mini-bar of beer. Agricultural and fishing town. We recruited friends for the purpose of exercising in the winter.
Initially, it was held in various parts of Hokkaido, but the turning point was the “Hamanasu National Athletic Meet” in 1989. Implementation was decided, and Asia’s first dedicated link “Tokorocho Curling Hall” was completed in 1988. “Until now, the ice was tilted and there were mountains. Lucky shots wouldn’t win, so high-level teams would win. That’s why Olympic athletes are coming out.”
As Mr. Suzuki says, there are five people in Nagano in 1998 when the competition was adopted. After that, he will send people from all tournaments to Beijing. Since 1990, it has been incorporated into elementary school classes, one in five is an experienced person, about 40 teams participate in the town league, and the votive tablet of Tokoro Shrine is in the shape of a stone.
Such a town also merged in 2006. It changed from “Tokoro-cho, Tokoro-gun” to “Tokoro-cho, Kitami-shi”. It is about 40 km to Kitami Station in the center, and 1 hour by car. The area code of the telephone number is also different. Now, the city administration uses “Kitami City, the city of curling” as a catchphrase, and there is a “curling post” at Kitami Station, and there are also commemorative goods. Until then, Kitami was said to have been yakiniku. Curling was added there.
Following the newly established “Advics Tokoro Curling Hall” in Tokoro-cho in 2013, the “Argo Graphics Kitami Curling Hall” will also open in the former Kitami City in 20. However, “the number of children competing in Tokoro is decreasing due to the declining birthrate,” says Suzuki. For that reason, it seems that Loco Solare’s breakthrough this time will lead to a rekindling of the curling boom.