Catch-22

I play Go at the local go club. I play in the class that is for learners who want to improve their game. There are two people there who are strong players of the dan 「段」level (I'm only a 「級」level and require handicap stones). I almost always lose to them so I bought Go game recording paper with the thought that I could improve my game if I could replay the game and look for where I made fatal mistakes (I always seem to make the same mistakes). So I brought out my pad of paper and pen and was immediately stopped by the owner/teacher of the club who said that I could only record the game after it was finished, but not while I was playing. This would require the memory of a professional, which I'm not. It seems to defeat the purpose for which I intended when I bought the paper. Also, since I play kind of fast, recording the game would help me slow down a bit.

So it's okay to record the game, but only if you have a good enough memory to record it after the fact. If I had such a good memory, then I wouldn't need to record it. Like the Catch-22 in the book of the same name - if you want to get out of dangerous combat duty, which any sane person would want, then you're not crazy and would have to perform combat duty. You would be crazy to want to do more combat missions, but sane if you didn't. Either way you'd have to do the combat missions.

Anyway, life is full of Catch-22s. And Japan is full of 「不文律」