As well as being the challenger in that match, Shibano is also almost twenty years younger than the challengee, Cho U. In fact, Shibano was only nineteen when he took the title.
I must introduce this habit to my local go club.
I am pretty sure our boards haven’t been wiped since longtime!
Convincing people to wash stones could be more difficult. Even in this period of Covid curse, we don’t clean stones. Someone uses gel to clean their hands but that’s all.
In live tournaments we are more accurate and we use gel before and after game. We should do that also in club.
It isn’t strictly related to this topic, but I love fidgeting and recently I made some begleri (Greek people should know what I’m talking about). Last week I actually played go at the club while fidgeting with one of them.
This triggered a memory a long long time ago when I was just a little kid in the classroom where my teacher would always play with the 手轉球 (“exercise balls” if want to call it that, and his was made of wood), and sometimes he would play it during a game.
They are made of enamelled metal and they have a ringing sound.
I think they would be quite annoying while playing.
In Italy we call them just Chinese balls.
I was looking on amazon few days ago and I found out that there are similar objects named Baoding balls. Also Wikipedia has a page about them.
I think it’s a funny name since “ding” is very appropriate for their sound.
I always saw them smooth while in your picture they aren’t.
I’ve seen metal ones and wooden ones, and wooden ones can have various shapes with carvings and silent. The name came from a place in China, and the sound is a happy coincidence I think.