Within Driving Range

One of my secret phantasies is that one day I'll get a phone call from the Japanese embassy along the lines of "Mr. Penguin! The Japanese government urgently needs your advice on how to make Japan a nice place to live! Please help us!". Well, I'd be off like a shot, and one of the first pieces of advice I'd give is "tear down each and every single golf driving range".

This may sound somewhat dramatic if you've never spent any time in Japan, but golf driving ranges are big business - as is anything golf-related - and the driving ranges offer excellent possibilities for improving your swing without going to the trouble of visiting an actual golf-course, most of which are inconveniently located very far away from where your average swing-practicer lives. Unfortunately for the Japanese urban landscape, where most afficionados of the sport with the small hard white spheres reside, it would be imprudent if golf balls were to come flying through the neighbourhood, so each and every driving range is surrounded by huge fences, and as you can imagine these don't do much for the neighbourhood's looks (though I suppose it's preferable to having your windows broken on a regular basis).

For example, the other day I was engaged in some virtual aerial tourism with the aid of Google Map's satellite pictures and I came across this driving range, which is visible at a slight angle so it's possible to get an impression of just how tall the fencing is - especially in relation to the cars in the carpark and the houses adjacent on the right-hand side of the picture.

(Click here to view the original on Google Maps).

The driving range show here is located in Koga (古河) in Tochigi prefecture, somewhat to the north of Tokyo, so the general area isn't that crowded and there are plenty of open fields still. Bear in mind these places are usually lit up at night: in the middle of more built-up areas they become real eyesores, and I certainly wouldn't want to live next to one.

With that in mind it occured to me I had no idea what this kind of place is called in Japanese, and that it might be a good idea to find out for any potential future negotiations with a Japanese Real Estate Person regarding the potential future location of Penguin HQ. The intuitive assumption, as so often with Japanese, would be simply ドライビングレーンジ, but a quick Google search indicates this isn't the case, with ドライビング being more of an automobile term. One of my many old-fashioned paper dictionaries suggests "ゴルフ練習場" (gorufu renshûjô, literally "golf practice place"), and a little further research into the fascinating world of real-life golf simulation brings to light the more specific term "打ちっぱなし練習場" (uchippanashi renshûjô), which literally translates as the very descriptivie "practice place for hitting and abandoning". (I wish Japanese had more words like this, rather than the endless stream of bastardized katakana English... I'll suggest it to the Embassy when they call).

Another interesting fact I came across is that the problem of golf driving ranges might solve itself given enough time: according to this report, they've been in continuous decline since 1993, with 265 facilities closing in 2005, leaving just 3,987 in operation across Japan. There's hope yet.