(Originally posted on wiqaable.com)
I'm not good at playing sports in general. I have never been, since the time when I was forced to participate in organized physical activities in elementary school. I hated, dreaded, and feared P.E. class all through my education. In Japan, cool/popular boys are expected to be good at sports, especially soccer, basketball, and baseball. I have an impression that you could still be popular without playing sports in the U.S. school-age culture, but that was just not a possibility as I was growing up. Since I was never good at any sports that involved balls, my masculinity was constantly being called into question, both from the outside and inside of my head. My growing self-consciousness didn't help the awkward changing times before and after P.E. classes at all.
Still, I was swimming every week. My father worked (and he still does) at a local swimming school, so it was natural that I belonged there, although my parents never forced me to. On and off, I kept swimming, or more like playing underwater, and I became an instructor when I was 15 years old. My self-imposed intense swimming practices began and lasted until I moved to San Francisco.
I have also always liked biking, which is not considered a sport in Japanese culture, unless you rode for competitions that are also gambling for the spectators. I didn't own a...