A story about Japanese Badminton

Last week as I walked into the foyer of the Sports Center for badminton, my club members, already arrived, looked at me as if I was glistening cooked meat. Perhaps pulling a wagon of heavy gold after me? The reason behind this warm welcome was that, including myself, they reached a quorum and could now hold the annual club meeting as scheduled. I wasn't particularly looking forward to a meeting when I'd been expecting badminton but I grinned and bared it in light of how generous they've been to me. Though most talk about yearly financial statements went over my head, but I thought it humorous enough to note here that while there are barely 21 members, 12 of which pay dues and 7 of which come regularly, they run the club like it's a 10,000 strong non-profit organization with activities around the globe! Looking at the numbers in detail, I realize now there is no way our merger fees could ever cover the substantial cost of shuttles. I had no idea we used so many each year! A board of directors and annual meetings are crucial requirements to securing funding. It quickly became apparent the real sticking point would be positions on the board. The opposite problem of having everyone wanting the same position: there were not enough regular members to fill even a handful of the required positions within the club. This devolved into an abusrd spectacle of people taking multiple positions or assigning people not present to positions considered ceremonial (case in point, poor Ishida-san, not seen in months because of his bum knee, has to play park golf in September). In this respect it was the only corner cut. In this act I was basically dead weight because I'm leaving in a couple of months or I could have very easily found myself on the committee-to-plan-a-badminton-festival.