An ex-boxer, Cho-san has never lost his love for the sport. After his restaurant was featured on TV, he was persuaded by some eager young boxing fans to give lessons on Sunday afternoons. In footage from 1987, we see Cho-san shadowboxing, followed by some of his trainees sparring, beginning with Jun Takahashi (blue tracksuit) and Cho-san’s younger son Hiroaki. Jun Takahashi fought professionally but subsequently became more famous as a nagurareya, or human punching bag, inviting people to take potshots at him in return for money after his business went bankrupt. The video concludes with the final round of Takahashi’s last professional fight, a points-defeat over five rounds to Takeo Takeuma in June 1990 at Tokyo’s Korakuen Hall.

In an otherwise typical scene from a Tokyo neighborhood, sparring partners trade punches on a street near Cho-san’s house as neighbors and passers-by come in and out of the frame. Two girls with balloons look like they are going to a birthday party [0:53] and a sumo wrestler on a bicycle temporarily loses his bearings as he navigates his way around the boxers [4:08]. For more on the story behind Cho-san’s Sunday boxing sessions, see Those Days, Those Times (15).