For those who have read the Japanese manga Doraemon, you may remember one detail: Nobi's dad is obsessed with golf.

He watches TV to watch golf tournaments, carries clubs to play with the president on weekends, and pretends to swing a ball around the house now and then.

Many people may wonder, is golfing so commonplace in Japan? Yes, it is.

Not only in the 1970s, when Doraemon was first serialized, but also today, golf is a popular and frequent activity in Japanese companies.

So today, let's learn about the golf life of Japanese office workers.

Golf is often thought of as a sport for the "middle-aged and elderly". However, when you join a Japanese company, you will find that many young people take golf lessons on their own initiative.

In the city, there are a lot of "golf practice rooms" in the middle of skyscrapers that are relatively small in size.

This is where young people go to learn the basic skills of swinging and hitting a golf ball and to practice for a certain amount of time before going out on a real golf course.

Some of these practice rooms charge by the hour like karaoke (about 2,000-5,000 yen an hour), while others charge by the number of strokes (5-30 yen per ball).

It's a bit more expensive to take an introductory lecture course or to have an instructor give one-on-one instruction, costing at least 10,000 yen or more for a single session.

There is almost always a golf club in a large traditional Japanese company, as well as regular weekend golf events.

Golfing in Japanese companies often starts early on Saturday mornings.

There are more than 2,000 golf courses in Japan, which is the third largest in the world, and the number of courses is almost equal to that of Canada, which is the second largest.

Due to the vastness of the courses, they are generally built in areas where land is cheaper.

This means that people in big cities such as Tokyo and Osaka must drive for hours to get there.

It costs around 15,000 yen to go to an official golf course, and with the cost of carts and gas, it's not uncommon for a visit to cost up to 20,000 yen.

Why do these Japanese office workers go to such lengths and spend so much money on golf activities?

Aside from a few who love the sport, the motivation for most is to build up contacts and get exposure to the top brass.

Most people want to get more opportunities to get to know each other and chat with their colleagues and leaders in the course of playing golf.

And for salespeople who need to maintain long-term relationships with high-level people at large clients, golf is even tantamount to a piece of the business.So it's not surprising that golf is so popular in Japan.