When you enter the Japanese one-person gym franchise Private Box Fit, you will see a completely different landscape from ordinary gyms. Instead of seeing people exercise in a spacious and open space, you will encounter a corridor lined with multiple rooms. When you open the door, you will find an exercise space with a full-length mirror installed on the wall. This is a one-person gym full of exercise equipment in each room. It is gaining popularity by attracting 85 stores and 90,000 members nationwide for its advantage of being able to exercise without paying attention to others.
In Japan, a variety of one-person sports services are on the rise. People can enjoy sports by themselves regardless of genre or number of games, such as golf, baseball, table tennis, and tennis. One-person fitness center, such as Private Box Fit, has recently been introduced nationwide. A variety of one-person fitness center franchises are popping up in different regions. Starting in Hiroshima, Hakozim offers a personal room for exercise part-time. The center has desks and chairs in its rooms for office workers and students who work and have simple meetings. It also provides an artificial intelligence trainer service, and when you type in the purpose of exercise or body weight on the smartphone application, the AI organizes an hour-long workout course. A virtual trainer appears on a mirror installed on the wall for training. One-person sports service that is popular regardless of age is “one-person golf.” In Japan, there are many places that have a one-person reservation page for the golf course reservation service. You can choose the golf course you want during your free time online without having to join a club or meeting. Some of the major companies are Rakuten Gora and Hitori Golfland under Rakuten, which introduce visitors to make a reservation for one person whenever they want to make a rounding but can’t find someone to go with, or when they suddenly want to play golf on holidays. The price is about 50,000 won to 80,000 won per person based on the morning rounding of golf courses near Tokyo. A growing number of companies are providing one-person services for sports that require partners, such as table tennis and tennis. They assume that they have an opponent and have a machine that fires the ball at different speeds to receive reservations for one person. You can enjoy a machine-to-human game without having to look at the wall alone and practice hitting the ball.
In the case of tennis, 60 to 80 tennis balls are fired per play. The Setagaya Sports Plaza, located in Setagaya-gu, Tokyo, receives 300 yen for the launch of 65 tennis balls. Tennis Bear, a blog specializing in tennis, said, “The advantage of this automatic tennis court is that there is no need to worry about other people or team members even if they swing in a wrong way, so it is more in demand than expected.”
The table tennis franchise “SmartThanks Gym” keeps all table tennis tables in individual rooms so that you can focus on your exercise without worrying about others. There is also a one-person machine table tennis table for people who work out alone, and you can do more than 100 different types of practice by yourself using the machine. All you have to do is make a reservation on the app, and all you have to do is make a non-face-to-face reservation and enjoy table tennis by yourself. A service that allows you to enjoy and practice baseball alone has also appeared. In Yokohama City’s “Baseball Gym,” there is a service where a coach takes care of a partner in a position that requires practice, such as a catcher, a pitcher, and a knocker (a person who hits the ball for defense practice), for one hour. For 1,500 yen an hour, the coach throws the ball or hits it with the bat where it is needed. In particular, in the case of knockers, the team coach or coach often takes this position because the ball must be raised by the internal and external players, and here, a professional coach directly takes charge of it by the hour, so you can practice stably. In addition, there are also a single-person batting machine, ranging from a model batting machine to a batting machine that allows you to wear a baseball spike and hit it directly to increase your sense of practice.
Kayusha, an agency that produces financial and life-plan content, analyzed that such single-person sports have been rapidly spreading since the pandemic. “In the past, being alone was used in a negative sense, such as loneliness, but since the pandemic, the meaning has changed to a number of activities that can be enjoyed alone,” Kayusha said. “A service that can be enjoyed alone in ball games, which is considered impossible without an opponent, is also appearing. In the future, single-person services will spread not only in sports but also in various fields so that you can continue to work at your own pace.”
JENNIFER KIM
US ASIA JOURNAL
