On July 1, the sea opened in an annual event called "umibiraki" (opening of the sea). My island celebrates umibiraki with the annual Shiraishi Yacht Race. This year, I and a couple of friends decided to enter the race. Since we all had limited sailing skills, we thought this would be a lot of fun. Our crew was an attorney, an English teacher and a columnist. Even though we had never entered a race before, we knew we had the main ingredient to win a Japanese yacht race: the ability to "gambaru."

Gambaru, or "to do your best," is the Japanese people's mantra for getting through any hardship in life, from getting out of bed in the morning to making it through a serious illness. Limited sailing skill falls somewhere in between.

The great thing about sailing is that the boat is wind-powered. In theory. When you buy a sailboat, you forget that there is no requirement for the wind to blow on the days you go sailing. So, although the gambaru crew had been practicing every weekend for the past two months, we were most skilled in the area of observing, "There's no wind!" This was usually followed by the another observation: "We're going backwards!"