Hanayama Honkaku Shogi Set

Hanayama produce some excellent games sets. They are always well designed and attractively packaged.

Recently, Hanayama added a new shogi game to their listings: The Honkaku Shogi set.



The board and pieces are made of plastic and the board has two built in drawers where the pieces are stored. The neat thing about the drawers is that they are set in each side of the board and you can pull them out and use them as trays to hold the pieces that you capture during the course of the game. (In shogi, when you capture a piece you can use it later as one of your own pieces and "parachute" it onto the board.)

If you are looking for an unusual and attractive Christmas present for a youngster, this would be ideal!

All orders will be shipped from Japan by Express Mail Service, so if you order before 10th December, you'll get it in time for Christmas!

To find out more and order a set, go to http://japanese-games-shop.com/shogi.html

How Many Shogi Koma Make Up A Single Set Of Pieces?

Feedback and enquiries from customers or potential customers is always informative!

Here is an email I received just now:

"About the shogi pieces, when you write "complete set of pieces" is that for one or two players?
Just to know how many I need to buy."

That is a very good question! It is also helps me to see things better from the customer's point of view. When I wrote the phrase "complete set of pieces" it seemed obvious to me that it meant 40 pieces - enough for two players to play a game of shogi.

But, actually, it is not so obvious. Just because I deal with shogi sets every day and am used to my own terminology does not mean that it is clear to someone who might be interested in buying a set from me. The customer comes to my site with no prior knowledge of me or the goods I offer.

So, let's be clear about this... my website offers "complete sets of shogi pieces that contain 40 pieces - all the pieces that two players need to play a game on one board". (Some sets include a spare piece, to make a total of 41 pieces!)

David Hurley
http://japanese-games-shop.com

I'm Back From My Holidays!

Got back from our family holiday in Austria yesterday afternoon. I have now taken the "away on holiday" notices down from http://japanese-games-shop.com and http://japanese-mahjong.com and so am officially "back in business".

If you have never been to the Austrian Alps before, I recommend it!

I also recommend 10 days away from computers and the Internet!

While I was away in Austria I received my largest order ever, from a mahjong club based in... Austria! I'll start working on it on Monday morning!

Ich danke Ihnen für Ihren Einkauf!

David Hurley
http://japanese-games-shop.com

Autumn Break In The Alive-With-Music Hills!

We are off to Austria on a family holiday, so there will be no more shipments of goods until October 2nd at the earliest!

If you do not mind waiting, you may still purchase any of the items on Japanese-Games-Shop.com, but acknowledgment of your order and turnaround will be delayed.

We will be staying in Viehhofen, between Salzburg and Zell Am See. My daughter has been preparing for the adventure by watching The Sound Of Music, and studying German with the help of Shuan The Sheep - er, sorry, Shaun Das Schaf!

Pamper Your Mahjong Craving By Playing On A High Quality, Robust, Mahjong Mat!

Do you suffer from a mahjong craving? Then you should consider pampering your craving by playing mahjong on a high quality, robust, Japanese mahjong mat!

I have just upgraded the shipping method for the heavier of the two mahjong playing mats that are available on my website at http://japanese-mahjong.com/mjmat.html.

I noticed that the information about that mat was confusing as I had posted two different shipping rates. Also, due to the weight of the mat I used to ship it by surface mail to save the customer shipping charges.

There is no problem with shipping rubber-backed mahjong mats from Japan by surface mail, since the mats are so robust they can survive the journey in good condition. The problems are that surface mail takes sooo long and also that it is less reliable than express mail service. As if that was not enough, surface mail has no tracking service.

So, I have taken another look at the situation and decided to... gulp... cover the extra costs of Express Mail Service shipping on this item MYSELF.

Now, whichever of the two mats you buy, you will get it much more quickly as they both are now being shipped by EMS - and you'll be able to follow the progress of your parcel via the EMS tracking service... Delivery is within a week of dispatch in most cases.

Did I mention that insurance is included in the shipping price?

So, mahjong players, pamper your mahjong craving by playing on a high quality mahjong mat! Head over to http://japanese-mahjong.com/mjmat.html and get yourself a mahjong mat!

Best wishes,

David Hurley
http://japanese-mahjong.com

Japanese Mini Mahjong Set With Transparent Tiles!

I have just updated my range of Japanese mahjong sets to include a new Mini Mahjong Set With Transparent Tiles


One improvement, I think, is the new-style Japanese acrylic mini mj set I just added. Now every single tile is transparent, so you can watch your opponents' every move - but go careful how you read those difficult character tiles!!

The craze for playing with transparent mahjong tiles developed out of the Akagi manga series, in which the hero, Akagi has to play in a game using a set of tiles with 3 out of 4 tiles being transparent. If he loses he has to have so much blood drawn from his body... If he keeps on losing and he'll die of blood loss...

The mini mj set is really a novelty or party set, or a portable holiday set. The score sticks and dice are also mini-size. The dice are especially microscopic!!

Check out the Japanese Mini Mahjong Transparent Tile Set!

New Disney Hanafuda Deck Added To My Listings

Disney has given a Japanese games company called Angel a license to produce a novelty Hanafuda card deck with Disney characters on the cards.



Hanafua card decks were first made in Japan over 350 years ago as a Japanese response to the introduction of Western-style playing cards.

A hanafuda card deck consists of 48 cards divided into 12 suits of four cards each. Each “suit” is named after a month of the year and portrays a flower that blossoms during that month.

The word “Hanafuda” can be literally translated as “flower cards”.

For more details about hanafuda decks in general and the Disney/Angel hanafuda deck in particular, check out Japanese-Games-Shop.com.

David Hurley
http://Japanese-Games-Shop.com

New Hand Carved Japanese Shogi Koma Added To The Range!

A few weeks ago I mentioned that I was planning to add a new set of hand carved shogi pieces to my range of top quality shogi koma sets.

It took me a while, but at last, today, I have done it!

The set is hand carved by craftsman Yamagami, using a deep-cut carving style. The style is very distinctive, as can be seen in the above photo.

The wood used for this set is Siamese boxwood.

For more photos and details about the set, click here.

David Hurley
http://japanese-games-shop.com

Yamato The White Fighter by Takahashi Yoshihiro Now Available!

Takahashi Yoshinori is famous in Japan as the creator of some of the most violent, and at the same time most appealing, manga stories to be published in Shonen Jump monthly comic for boys (but also read by quite a few girls).

In Takahashi Yoshinori's manga world it is very much a case of dog-eat-dog. He made his mark both in Japan and in Scandanavia with the publication of Ginga Nagareboshi Gin, a story about a Japanese Akita dog called Gin who goes in search of his father, Riki, deep in the Oku mountains of northern Honshu, where both humans and dogs are menaced by a sleuth of wild bears.

In the wake of that success, Takahashi created the Weed series, about the son of Gin. Then he brought out a prequel that describes the life and times of Gin's father, Riki, and his father, Shiro.

I just added Ginga Densetsu Riki to my site as these comic books, published in 2003 and 2007, are no longer so difficult to get on the secondary market.

Takahashi Yoshiro has also written a manga series called Shiroi Senshi Yamato, or Yamato the White Fighter. The story set in the world of Japanese Tosa fighting dogs. The fights depicted in the manga series are quite brutal, although the aim of Tosa dog fighting is not to fight to the death, but to fight until one dog loses spirit within a bout of up to thirty minutes.

If a dog loses the fight, but shows an undaunted spirit, then it stands a good chance of winning the competition on spirit alone.

The series is available in Ten volumes, and I have made every volume available as there seems to be a reasonable supply of them at the moment... although the secondary market fluctuates from week to week, as you will appreciate.

See: Japanese-Games-Shop.com/manga.html

New Japanese Study Dictionary Added To Listings!

I just removed the Japanese Buddhist Proverb Dictionary from my listings as it seems no longer to be available.

However, I have replaced it with an excellent Japanese language study tool:

The "Yoji Jukugo Jiten"

That is to say, being interpreted, the "Four-Character Japanese Idiom Dictionary".

As readers of one of my other blogs will be aware, Japanese words or idioms consisting of four characters (or Kanji) are the ultimate challenge of language proficiency, so getting some of them learned by heart is a must for the ambitious student of Japanese...


Here is a small selection of the yoji jukugo featured in the dictionary:

• Isshokenmei Isshokenmei ni yarimashita (I gave it everything I had.)
  
• Jigojitoku Jigojitoku da. (You brought it upon yourself.)
  
• Anchumosaku (Groping in the dark.)
  
• Bozenjishitsu (So completely disoriented that you have lost sight of yourself.)
  
• Gyokusekikonko (A jumble of jewels and rocks; a mixed bag.)
  

The dictionary costs just $3.50 and is available from http://japanese-games-shop.com/nihongo.html

David Hurley
http://japanese-games-shop.com

Spring Pruning and Planting!

The cherry blossom season has come and gone in Hiroshima and now the dogwood trees are out in bloom.

Meanwhile, over at Japanese-Games-Shop.com some pottering, pruning and planting has been going on behind the scenes....

Some items have been pruned from the listings.

OUT:

• Various sized mahjong dice - hardly an "in demand" line since most sets come with dice supplied. Then, when an order comes in I can rely on my supplier to be "out of stock" in the particular size and colour I require!!
• Plywood Shogi boards. Supplies became erratic in this neck of the woods.
• Beige Shogi cloths... Supplies seem to be erratic but a few still get through...

NEW LINES COMING SOON

• An "curvacious" style of high-quality hand-crafted Shogi koma.
• Glass Shogi sets!!
• Plastic Shogi playing mats.
• Igo boards
• Igo stones
• Igo bowls
• Novelty character (Doraemon?) mini igo sets

In short, authentic Japanese games lovers, "Watch this space"!!

David Hurley

http://japanese-games-shop.com/

How to Read a Mahjong Tile Before it is Your Turn to Take it From the Wall!

This is an article I recently posted to Articlesbase.com about the practice of "thumb-reading" tiles in Japanese mahjong.

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Modern Japanese mahjong tiles are made of a synthetic nylon material with the symbols for the suit numbers, winds and dragons stamped onto the face of the tiles. The face of every tile in a set can be distinguished not only by the design that you see, but also by the design that you can FEEL when you rub your thumb across the face of the tile!

And that is just what many of the more experienced Japanese mahjong players like to do in the course of a game - use feel the concealed face of the tile next to be taken from the wall with their thumbs! Yes, not a few seasoned hands have become competent at tile-reading by rubbing the indentations on tile-face with their thumbs.

It takes hours of practice to get to the point where you can accurately distinguish each of the 34 different tile faces of a standard Japanese mahjong set with your thumb, and there seems to be little advantage in being able to do so. It is a diverting party trick and it also adds some kudos to a player's game if the player can pluck a tile from the wall, announce what it is and discard it without so much as glancing at it. Mahjong is most exciting when played swiftly, so being able to read a tile without looking at it may be said to help the cause of speedy play, but apart from that there does not seem to be much practical profit in taking the trouble to learn the skill.

However, there is one case where a "thumb-reader" could glean some useful information about an opponent's tile. Experienced mahjong players enjoy playing a fast-paced game so if one player hesitates before discarding a tile, the player to his right is likely to have reached for "his" tile on the end of the wall before the first player has discarded. An experienced tile-reader places his thumb under the tile on the wall that he is about to take so that he can "read" it while waiting for his turn.

But then, when a discarded tile is claimed by another player as an open "Pon" the sequence of play is broken and the player who was waiting to take a tile - and who has now "read" it with his thumb - is passed over so the tile will most likely end up in another player's hand. In that case the "thumb reader" will know what the tile is and will perhaps pay attention to where it is placed in the other player's hand.

Some people might object that such a practice is a form of cheating, but others counter that it is just part parcel of the Japanese approach to the game.

Of course that is not to say that the player who took the tile from the wall cannot resort to some deceptive tactics of his own by adding the tile to a random place in his hand while appearing to concentrate on placing it carefully into position so as to mislead the "thumb-reader" as to the construction of the hand.

Whatever your attitude towards players reading tiles with their thumbs may be, that it can be done at all shows you how sensitive the human thumb - or "oya-yubi" in Japanese - can be.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/art-and-entertainment-articles/how-to-read-a-mahjong-tile-before-it-is-your-turn-to-take-it-from-the-wall-367683.html

About the Author:

This is the place where I try to persuade you, my fellow Japanese mahjong fanatic, that you ought to hot foot it over to my website, Japanese-Games-Shop.com and blow a large chunk of your hard earned wages (or ill gotten gains) on a seriously expensive, exclusive, utterly exotic, Japanese mahjong set. I recommend the Nintendo Yakuman New Ivory Japanese Mahjong Set, possibly the most expensive Japanese mahjong set this side of the Milky Way.

**NEW** Japanese Gift Certificates!

Thanks to the versatility of Paypal, I have been able to add an exciting new feature to the front page of Japanese-Games-Shop.com - Paypal Gift Certificates!

That means it is now possible for you to solve your present-buying problems by sending your friend or relative a gift certificate which can be cashed in at my website!!

Gift certificates range from an economical $10 to a positively generous $1,000 (just in case you'd like to treat your loved one to a pair of hand made Jun Hitoe vases from the Nishimoto Gallery ).

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Property For Sale in Japan!

If you think buying your own house in Japan would be expensive, think again...

You can get a detached two-storey house in a pleasant hillside location not far from Hiroshima Station for just ¥9,000,000, or $90,000. True, it is in need of renovation, but the property company whose books it is on informs me that they can completely renovate the interior for ¥5,000,000. 

For further details, drop me a line via the form on the front page of Japanese-Games-Shop.com

David Hurley

http://japanese-games-shop.com

Japanese Card Game: Iroha Karuta

One traditional card game which some Japanese people still play over the New Year's holidays is karuta. The word "karuta" comes from the Portuguese word for playing cards, "carta". 

A karuta deck is divided into two sets of cards. One set is called yomifuda or "reading cards", and the other is called torifuda or "taking cards." You need at least three people to make a game of karuta, the reader and the competitors. 

The torifuda are spread out face up. The reader takes a card from the top of his yomifuda deck and reads it aloud to the players. The players immediately try to find the card that matches the reading. After all the cards have been taken, the winner is the player with the most cards.

There are two types of karuta game, "uta-karuta" and "iroha-karuta".

In "uta-karuta", popularly known as "hyakunin isshu", the reader reads the first two lines of a classical tanka (five line poem) and the players try to find the card with the last two lines written on it. To play that game you need to be familiar with the 100 poems that make up the card deck.

Iroha karuta are more accessible to the foreign student of Japanese as anyone who can read the hiragana can play. The yomifuda consist of a series of famous Japanese proverbs and the torifuda are illustrated with colourful drawings of the respective proverbs and have the initial kana in one corner of the card. Each letter of the hiragana syllabary has its own proverb.

I recently added a new iroha karuta deck to my site, the lively "Edo" set, evocative of a time in pre-industrial Japan when there was no concrete, no "bridges to nowhere" and all the men wore top knots and loin cloths.

The two proverbs shown in the photo on the right are:

• Ino mo arukeba bou ni ataru. - A strolling dog will find a stick.
• Nodo moto sugireba atsusa wasureru. - Once swallowed, heat forgotten.

David Hurley
Japanese-Games-Shop.com

"Pellucid & Energetic" Shogi Pieces Delicately Hand Carved On Japanese Boxwood

Here are some photos of a "ryoukobori" style hand carved shogi set. "Ryoukobori" is a particularly delicate calligraphic font style which requires an immense amount of skill and concentration on the part of the craftsman.

I took these photos with the camera on my mobile phone the last time I visited my shogi supplier. We did not take the pieces (shogi-koma) out of their wrappers, so the photos are not the best and there is a lot of reflected light.

Even so, I think you can get a good idea of the quality of workmanship that goes into creating a hand-carved set of shogi pieces.

The shogi pieces photographed here have been carved out of Japanese boxwood ("tsuge"). Japanese boxwood is highly prized by craftsmen for its warm tone and fine grain.

On a high quality set the craftsman carves his name in the rear edge of one of the kings. On even higher quality sets the calligraphic style of the characters is carved on the rear edge of the other king.

In the photo on the left, the upper king has been engraved with "ryoukobori" and the lower king has been engraved with the name of "craftsman Sanpo," one of Japan's top shogi-koma makers.

I recently shipped a set of "ryoukobori" shogi pieces to a customer in America, and this is what he had to say about them when he received them:

"They are absolutely beautiful! You're right, the Japanese boxwood does have a warmer tone to it, also a tighter grain. And I keep wanting to call them "pellucid"-- I know the term doesn't strictly apply to an opaque two-dimensional surface, but as I look at the pieces the word somehow keeps coming into my mind. And the Japanese characters (to this Iowan whose "reading comprehension" of Japanese begins and ends with Shogi pieces!) have a very elegant & energetic look to them...

"The energetic aspect of the kanji on these pieces is something that comes forth more and more strongly to me, the more I look at them. " Paul Burgess

If you would like to order a set of hand carved shogi-koma, check out the range on offer on this page of my website.

As soon as I receive an order I contact my supplier and they will be carefully packed and shipped directly to your door by Express Mail Service from Japan.

David Hurley
Japanese-Games-Shop.com

Introducing the "Take" Mahjong Set

The start of the year has certainly been busy and hectic (just how we like it at Japanese-Games-Shop.com). "Your Man In Japan" has been toiling away the hours on research, purchasing, adding new items to the range, publicizing them, dealing with new orders, packing parcels and hauling them to the post office, once it opened after the winter holidays...

Packing and hauling... packing and hauling... packing and hauling...

This week I have been holding two extended conversations with my suppliers and clients; one about a fine set of Japanese boxwood shogi pieces (report to follow soon), and the other about a new mahjong set that I have just added to my site. One moment I'm getting into the details of how different mahjong sets measure up to each other, and the next I'm admiring some finely crafted Shogi pieces, while trying to work out what my long-suffering supplier is telling me about the craftsman who made the set...

It was a bit of a shock when these pleasant activities were rudely interrupted by the beginning of college term and Your Man In Japan had to turn his attention back to the classroom. Don't get me wrong, I love teaching, but my New Year's Resolution is to take on no more teaching contracts and gradually whittle my teaching schedule down to just a few hours a week so that I can devote myself to my expanding my online activities. The last time I counted, I had five blogs and as many websites up and running and several domain names secured for further expansion... Here's a list of my active websites

• Japanese-Games-Shop.com
  
• Japanese-Mahjong.net
  
• Grasp-The-Nettle.com - Do you also want to make money online? Grasp the nettle in 2008!!
  
• English-Renaissance.net - Essays on Shakespeare, Francis Bacon, Ben Jonson etc.
  
• 100-Word-Book-Reviews.com - Get the guts of a book in exactly 100 words.
  
• Succeed-In-English.com - Study English with success! Study English & succeed!!
  

Introducing the "Take" Mahjong Set

The mahjong set I have been checking out this week was called to my attention by a player in Holland who wanted to know whether it was as good as it looked. I ordered a set from the supplier and put it through its paces...

Click the photo to enlarge


The "Take" (pronounced "TA-KEH" with the stress on the first syllable) mahjong is a mid-range set which is designed with ease of handling and smooth play in mind.

The Tiles

The tiles are noticably brighter than the standard "off white" colouring so the faces are clear and easy to read. The tiles are also a little bigger than the standard Japanese size, measuring 19mm x 29.5mm x 15mm.

Click the photo to enlarge
Mahjong manufacturers often design a slight convexity into the back of the tiles and add a "notch" in the sides to represent bamboo. The designers of the Take set have dropped these features in favour of a slightly flatter back which makes for more stable walls! The tiles are also slightly lighter than average.

Click the photo to enlarge

In the above photo you can see three tiles from three different Japanese mahjong sets. The one on the left is a standard Japanese mahjong tile, the middle one is from an exclusive set sold under the label of the Mahjong Museum in Chiba-ken. The tile on the right is from the "Take" set. As you will notice, it is slightly larger and brighter in finish than the other two.

The tiles are standing on a wall of "Take" tiles.

Click the photo to enlarge

The quality of the detailed paint work is also good - this is one of the most important considerations when I select mahjong sets for my site. I'm pleased to say that the paint work is good and accurate.

The tiles shown in the picture above are the Spring Season tile and the Red 5-Coin, which also has an "embedded jewel" replacing the middle coin.

Click the photo to enlarge

The "Take" tile is closest to the camera in the last picture.

Other Features of the Set

The set comes with plastic trays, seven dice of two different sizes, standard sized scoring sticks plus some extra counting chips, a wind marker PLUS a novelty "Black West Tile" keyring!!

The case is made of standard quality plastic, with poppers and a handle. On the back there is the logo of the set in yellow.

Order a Set

To order a "Take" mahjong set, click here. Delivery is by Express Mail Service, which includes tracking and insurance and, as a rule, gets the goods to your door within a week of the shipping date.

David Hurley
Japanese-Games-Shop.com

Happy 2008 From Japanese-Games-Shop.com!

Happy New Year from Hiroshima, Japan and everybody at Japanese-Games-Shop.com!

By "everybody", I mean just "me" because Japanese-Games-Shop.com is a one-gaijin show!

...And the reason why I haven't posted on this blog or added anything new to the website for a while is because my nose was firmly attached to the grindstone in the run up to Christmas. As you can see in the photo below, the site has been getting a lot of traffic...!


Japanese-Games-Shop.com has been attracting a lot of traffic recently!

New Years Resolution: Add more stuff to Japanese-Games-Shop.com

Now that the New Year has arrived I have found some time to expand the range of products. This month I am concentrating on manga and have added three new lines already.

Crayon Shin Chan
I must admit that this is one of my all time favourite manga series. It was a huge hit in Japan in the 1990's - yeah, I was here then too, so I remember it well. I even bought a Shin-chan character bottle of bubble bath to take back to the U.K. as a memento, but my sojourn in Japan has outlasted both the bubble bath and the bottle...

Crayon Shin Chan is a nursery school kid who indulges in thoroughly "inappropriate" (ghastly word) speech and behaviour. The manga was originally aimed at the adult market, but once it was turned into a television cartoon is became immensely popular with kids too, doubtless because they take great delight in identifying with, and most likely copying, Shin-chan's impertinence and lack of decorum.

If you study written Japanese then this comic will be a stimulating and enjoyable challenge to your reading comprehension skills. The basic dialogue uses a lot of everyday language and common expressions, but there is also a lot of word-play as Shin-chan inadvertently - or deliberately - makes linguistic blunders that embarrass his parents or outrage whoever else happens to be in ear-shot of them... However, like many manga, the kanji characters are drawn with furigana syllables down the side to aid reading comprehension.



Nobunaga

This is a very different calibre of manga... Nobunaga is one of the greatest Samurai generals of Japanese history. The manga series is a dramatic retelling of his life and struggles.

The illustrator, Ryouichi Ikegami, deserves to be better known in the West. In 2001, he won the Shogakukan Manga Award for general manga as the artist of another manga series called "Heat", which I will shortly be adding to my manga listings...

The language level of this series is quite demanding, partly because of the historical material it deals with and partly because of the lack of supporting furigana. This is a manga series for big boys and girls!



Howl's Moving Castle

This is the comic version of the 2004 animated film, "Hauru No Ugoki-Shiro", directed by possibly the greatest animation artist of this generation, Hayao Miyazaki.

The Japanese animation film is an adaptation of a young adult fantasy novel by British author Diana Wynne Jones. It broke box office records in Japan, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.

The film-comic series faithfully reproduces the animation in full-colour. If you are not familiar with the film, check here for a synopsis and some nice stills.

The Japanese dialogue in the film-comic is relatively straightforward and every kanji character is supported by furigana.

The nice thing about these comics is that they are Printed in full colour on good quality paper.



David Hurley
Japanese-Games-Shop.com