Japanese Riichi Mahjong Tournament To Be Held In Britain, 22nd August 2009.

What is believed to be the first Japanese Riichi Mahjong Tournament ever to be staged in the UK will be taking place on August 22nd, 2009, at the Guildford Golf Club in Surrey, England.

The organisers, Ian Fraser and Peter Langford participated in the European Riichi Mahjong Championship in Hanover, 2008 and promptly decided that they shouldn't keep that much fun all to themselves.

Thus was born the grandly titled UK Invitational Tournament, hopefully to be followed in 2010 by the UK Open! The field looks set for the growth of Japanese mahjong in Britain...

For most of the participants this will be their first mahjong tournament. The early indications are that there will be at least 24 players including a handful of invited participants from mainland Europe.

The field so far is composed of both some relative newcomers to the game as well as some long standing players who have had their own social game running for well nigh 30 years, since one of the group returned from having spent a couple of years living in Tokyo.

If you want to find out more about the event contact Peter Langford or Ian Fraser, or visit www.mahjongnews.com for a quick rundown.

Was It The Carp That Caused The Crash?

Jaime and Nobu came over to David's place for a quiet afternoon's mj last Tuesday, right in the middle of the Golden Week holidays.

The first game was a relatively quiet affair. Nobu went out on "Ron" on a 3-Coin, 6-Coin wait not noticing (a) that he was waiting for the 3-Coins and (b) that that tile was sitting in his discard row.

David finished the only winner of that game, on a modest +17.

The second game proved disastrous for Nobu though, perhaps because just before Mrs H took Miss H to the park, DH asked her to switch channel from the cartoon network that had absorbed Miss H for much of the afternoon, to the baseball, more particularly the game between the Hiroshima Carp and... and... well I forgot who it was. Nobu had been checking the progress of the game on his mobile phone from time to time, but I guess having the game live on t.v. must have distracted him from the mahjong game as he gave away 82,000 points to Jaime.

David also conceded a bit of ground, even more modest than the ground he gained in the first game, so the recent good form of the foreign Old Guard continues (for the time being)...

Jaime -5, +93 = +88
David +17, -11 = +6
===
Nobu -12,* -82 = -94

* Chombo

May Day Riot

Bazzer was in toon...

A few weeks ago, when Bazzer was in toon, we happened to stumble upon Yasu in Mac bar; Yasu of whom neither hide nor hair has been seen for a couple of years or so, which is saying something I can tell you. I don't think the inscrutable presence at the end of the bar would have acknowledged us had not Jaime pointed out to me who it was, and I not gone over and slapped him about a bit until he promised to come back and play mahjong at Kodama...

Yasu made good on that promise on May Day evening and was sat taking his ease over a beer with Noda at the table in the far corner of the parlour when I arrived.

Noda had been drinking after his missus returned home too late for their date. I mean, Noda had been drinking more than usual and seemed to be having difficulty getting a grip.
Jaime was starting Oya in the first game, and by the time he had finished he was on a comfortable +53, with nobody else going anywhere, and Yasu and Noda had committed a Chombo apiece.

Then David went all over the meadow a-gathering with gusto while both Yasu and Noda went nuts giving up many a blossoming bough so that he could bring home the May.

The Four-of-Coins was a particularly ripe morsel that Yasu gave up twice in a row to David's one-tile waits. Noda got clobbered on David's Ryanshi Double-Riichi on the West tile when Noda threw the Hatsu which David needed to complete Chitoi...

Yasu began to get restless, and the inscrutable facade began to slip. Checking his watch (for the game did extend over the two hour mark as David racked up 13 tenbou as Oya...), Yasu seemed shocked to find that it was already past ten o'clock, appeared anxious to be elsewhere and was heard from time to time to express the opinion that mahjong was "taigi", as it can indeed seem to be at times...

By the end of the first game the situation stood thus:


David +217
Jaime +53
===
Noda -118
Yasu -152

Yasu bailed out, leaving only a few coins on the table... and David fondly supposing that he had popped out to fetch some cash.

So the Old Guard settled in for the rest of the evening, with the foreign parties quite expecting Noda to enjoy a mid-evening shochu-revival. Noda, however, had pushed the boat out a bit too far and the best he could manage was second-and-in-the-black in the third game, which Jaime won.

The games either side of that, however, went to David and by the end of the night the scores were:

David +217, +36, -22, +54 = +285
Jaime +53, +1, +20, -26 = +48
===
Yasu -152,* --, --, -- = -152
Noda -118,* -37, +2, -28 = -181

* = Chombo

The result saw David catapult up to the top of the table, breaking this year's best score and top score records. Jaime also continues to head upwards, with Japanese players sinking...

Eliot On Lilacs And The Burial Of The Dead & Nobu's Game Of Mahjong.

It was old T. S. Eliot who opined that April was the cruellest month. Something to do with innocent lilacs and the burial of the dead...

... which reminds me, last Friday Nobu-san appeared on the scene, lilac like, like a harbinger of spring and joined Noda and I for his first game of mahjong of this still rather chilly year.

April is indeed the cruellest month. Here we are nearly at Golden Week in Japan and tonight it was brass monkey weather, cold enough to blast a few innocent lilacs in the flower, I shouldn't wonder.

Anyway, here is the way the game went. It was a game of extremes. David won the first game in triple figures, with Nobu conceding the majority of the points and going out on a Chombo hand at one stage.

Then the flow of the game began to move Noda's way, but David finished in the black and received a further boost from Nobu's Yakitori.

David changed seat in the third game, which was a pity for him as he proceeded to give half of his winnings to Noda who was in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree. Still, since Nobu committed his second Chombo during this game and finished it owing David 12,000 and Noda 30,000, David didn't feel he ought to complain too much.

It was only twenty minutes to midnight so a fourth game was offered, but Nobu seemed somewhat dismayed by his blasting in the bud and elected to call it a night.

Noda -18, +40, +150 = +172
David +103, +9, -58 = +54
===
Nobu -85,* -49,** -92,* = -226

* Chombo
** Yakitori

So, in a single swipe, we have a new top player (if one can seriously call Noda "new" in any sense of the word) and a new bottom player, and a new top record and a new bottom record, and a new best result and a new worst result, and to cap it all, a new worst ever form record of -226/3.

Yes, April can be a cruel month for the lilacs.

David H
Japanese-Mahjong.com

How Like Unto A Dwarf Wisteria Is My Game Of Japanese Mahjong

As my afternoon and evening classes had been cancelled I was able to pop back to the homestead where I thought I might indulge in a quiet afternoon nap and woke up about four hours later. Thus refreshed I hopped onto the tram into town and hopped off at Kamiyacho Nishi, wherefrom I wended my way towards Bizenya to set myself up for the evening with the old Yasai Ramen and Gyouza combination.

I don't know much about the people who run Bizenya, but from what I gather, they are fond of art and gardening since the place often has a mini exhibition of pictures on the side wall, and different potted plants at the entrance.

As I approached the threshold, my eye was drawn by what I took to be some cut wisteria branches in full bloom outside the door. On further inspection it turned out that I was looking at an ornamental wisteria plant, uncut, potted and very much in the land of the living. I didn't know that you could get full sized blossom off a miniature plant, but it seems that you can and that the Japanese go in for a bit of wisteria bonsai on the side.

My game this evening had something of the quality of the ornamental wisteria about it. With an unpromising start, such as might lead one to suppose the Wisteria Minima Davida was dead. But in the middle of the evening there were signs of life and something resembling a recovery came into blossom. I am not sure how high this particular wisteria can grow or whether its vines will have anything more than a vain hope to cling on to.

Meanwhile, the great Wisteria Senexa Nodaria spread and blossomed rampantly across the evening, casting a shade on the falling petals of the weeping cherry, Cerasus Infortunius Iacobus

The result means that for the first time in about six months(?) David is off the bottom. Noda, however, is back in the black so we wonder how much longer the top of table will be the preserve of foreign plant species...

Noda +33, -22, +70, +3 = +84
David -45, +84, -13, +32 = +58
===
Jaime +12, -62, -57, -35 = -142

During the course of the evening Jaime asked me if I had seen the youtube video of Susan Boyle, a contestant in the Britain's Got Talent show, who shocked the judges with her performance...

Of course, I had not seen it, but when I got home I checked it out... Fantastic!

Here's a link to the show.

Japanese-Mahjong.com

Missing Link An Embarrassment To The Fossil Record!

Have You Seen The Missing Link?

Events took a surprising turn while I was away on my hols in February. A game was played, the only game of the month, but the scoresheet went missing.

It was a rum do, the first missing link in our evolution, and an embarrassment to the fossil record of the 3-Player Mahjong Club.

The word was that this was a game which had seen Noda lose.

Apparently, Jaime racked up the biggest loss so far this year (which is not saying much, with so few games having been played), and Kenyon emerged as the big winner.

But, if a scoresheet is not handed in to the Central Committee...

Anyway, we met up last Friday for a few beers to set ourselves up for the-only-game-in-March and Jaime offered up his mia culpa, which had something to do with rubbish and bins and vacuum cleaners and swiftly descended (or was cunningly diverted) into a debate that hinged upon the semantics of whether a thing (such as a scoresheet) could be said to have been got (or gotten) rid of if the personage last known to have had it in his possession had not intentionally, or knowingly, or in his right mind, binned it.

We moved on for a final "quick snifter before the game" in the front parlour of an izakaya right opposite the Kodama mahjong club, a small joint where the drinkers congregate around a sort of glass-topped crate on top of an ancient Japanese Paulonia tree trunk and have their beers or whatevers passed to them over the izakaya back corridor counter.

I can see that place becoming a regular Friday evening "quick snifter" haunt...

As we entered Kodama, the state of play was as it had been back at the end of January, which favoured Ray (who remained top) and Jaime (who stayed in the black). It helped Noda, was indifferent to Hide and David, and hindered Kenyon by a hundred-and-something points.

The evening turned out to favour Jaime, who turned out to be the only winner overall. David managed his best result of the year by finished second, on a modest -12, and Kenyon and Noda were also down, in double figures, but nothing major.

Then, yesterday, I received an e-mail from Jaime: The Missing Link had been discovered and the fossil record was complete!

Jaime's e-mail:

i found the missing score sheet... id never taken it out of my wallet...

...have no memory of putting it in my wallet...

And here it jolly well is!



So, at a stroke, Kenyon jumped to the top of the table, and Jaime sunk into the red.

Here is the table as it stands, this April 3rd, in the Year of Grace 2009:

Kenyon +125
Ray +83
Hide +25
Jaime -25
Noda -36
Jezz -44
David -128

David H

After A Long Absence, Jezz...

This has been the quietest start to the Cock's Eye year ever. The first quarter is done and dusted but we have had just three, or some would say, four evenings, about which, more will be said in a moment.

First, here's the belated report on the game that was played at the end of January...

After a long absence, Jezz returned to the table. He flew in from HK to renew his old love affair with some of the delights of Hiroshima and met up with us at Kemby's for Happy Hour on Friday 30th January.

At first it did not look as if any mahjong would be happening that evening as The Poor Little Cypriot was the only representative of the local foreign contingent present. Happily though, Hide was able to play and Noda joined us later.

Jezz, Noda and Hide, Kodama Jansou, 30th Jan 2009

Hide won the first game, Jezz won the second, despite feeling at a disadvantage after several years of playing Chinese mahjong (no Riichi, no discard row, go out on anything anyhow, etc).

Noda promptly won the third, starting off with a Suuanko hand within minutes of joining the table.

David hit three figures in the negative before staging an end-of-the-evening rally to halve his deficit. The losing streak continues!

Noda --, --, +57, +52, -38, -- = +71
Hide +22, -6, -4, -22, 0, +35 = +25
===
Jezz -4, +18, +11, -24,* -12, -33 = -44
David -18, -12, -64, -6, +50, -2 = -52

* Oya Chombo.