Japan 2025, Kyoto & Table Tennis

Thanks for sharing my memories of our fabulous, bucket-list trip to Japan in November 2025.

Not every tourist will pack their paddle and table tennis shoes when they visit a foreign country. We did, and I’m so glad we had this experience.

Thanks to technology like Google Translate, we were able to find a great Kyoto Table Tennis Club called “Table Tennis for Everyone”.

Kevin arranged for us to have a wonderful morning playing table tennis. We had one hour private lesson, plus an hour and a half group lesson.

Arigato gozaimasu ! Thank you, Oye-San!

Through Oye-San we were able to get tickets for a professional table tennis team tournament that Saturday.

We spent an amazing Saturday afternoon soaking up the atmosphere, the crowds, pint-sized cheerleaders and incredibly high level of play. (Beforehand, we explored the Kyoto Gyoen National Gardens. Check out my post about that here.)

The KBS center hosts a variety of concerts and sporting events.

We arrived early. Soon every seat was filled.

Cute Kiddo’s provided cheerleading, and performed a dance routine at intermission

Giant scoreboard helped us keep track. As you can see, every seat was filled.

Of course everything was in Japanese, and we were the only tourist faces in the crowd. The atmosphere was great. Table tennis is one of those sports that shares a common language.

We had a fabulous time, and I think I can say that both our morning lesson (private and group) and this Saturday afternoon were one of the highlights of our trip to Japan.