81-year-old skateboarder still learning new tricks
OSAKA, JAPAN • Yoshio Kinoshita is living proof you can teach an old dog new tricks.
The 81-year-old rides the ramps at his local skate park in the city of Osaka almost every morning, picking up tips from skateboarders decades younger than him.
“They are all my teachers,” said Kinoshita, who worked as a technician in the construction industry before retiring and still works part time as an attendant in a bicycle parking lot.
“At first I was holding on to the railing” he said, before he progressed to mastering a 180 degree turn and other tricks.
Kinoshita picked up skateboarding just two years ago, when he bought a board he saw at a market selling unclaimed goods left on the railway.
The $7.15 skateboard was a spur of the moment purchase that changed the Japanese octogenarian’s life.
“It’s a sport with a sense of tension,” he said. “Rather than zoning out, I think skateboarding improves the ability to think even just by a little bit ... for (old) people like me who try to learn new things, if we don’t practice it little by little every day we will forget how to do it.”