Games

Last night some of my friends tried to teach me Mah Jongg. It's difficult! Before I could start learning the game, I had to have a Chinese lesson. Luckily, I can read most of the kanji on Mah Jongg tiles, and the pronunciations of those kanji in Chinese are not too different from Japanese. I had trouble remembering 'North' (which is nothing like Japanese) until it was pointed out to me that it is the 'pei' from 'Beijing' (the correct pronunciation being somewhere between a 'p' and a 'b'). So after about half an hour of "what's this one?" "pa man!" we started playing the game.

I don't quite get it yet. It's kind of like poker, but about ten or twenty times more difficult. That's about all I can say. I can see why it's addictive, though. It was fun, and challenging. Oh, and I won. A combination of beginner's luck, and the advice I was receiving from everyone on which tile to throw away. I ended up with nearly half the money sticks after three games, although there were four of us. That was because I won the first two rounds, and was the father. (Don't ask me what that means, I'm not quite sure. Something like being the President in a game of Scum).

Before we played Mah Jongg, we went shopping. On that shopping trip I bought, amongst other things, Final Fantasy XII. Hah, hah, hah!!!! I LOVE living in Japan! Right, I'm going to go start FFXII right now!