Friday 23rd November: Is It All Over Bar The Shouting?

It was the Labour Day holiday here in Japan today, so I didn't have to haul myself out of bed at 6:15am and go on the "Busy Friday" run to the women's college where I attend classes during term time.

I say "attend" because I would blush to say that I actually did anything resembling "labour" during class time. After all, it is the students who are supposed to work (not that many do). My job is to turn up and set the objectives if there are any, and theirs is to appear to be engrossed in carrying them out. But, like I says, it was Labour Day so labour was something I did not have to do that morning.

According to Jaime, who has a remarkable head for trivia, it was on the same Friday of last year that we made our first visit to Jantopia. Jantopia is now our alternative mahjong parlour when we fancy a change of scenery. We therefore agreed to go there for tonight's game and take advantage of the holiday by starting a couple of hours earlier than usual.

When we arrived at the parlour, however, it turned out to be shut for the holiday this year so we agreed to try another parlour called "Suriirando" which was farther down the street.

Just in case you didn't understand the name, it is the Japanese katakana rendering of the words "Three" and "Land". Three-Land, the parlour where three-player mahjong can be played! (Actually, in Hiroshima at least, you can play three-player mahjong in any parlour, but let that pass.)

As we drew near we saw the poster on the right. Three-Land - could it be the Land of Three Young Beauties? - was beginning to look promising! But Ray recalled the time we went to a mahjong parlour whose advertising placard had promised an "all female staff" only to discover that there was not a single female on the premises.

We went into the parlour and found ourselves in a larger, more business-like joint than the little mama-parlours that we usually frequent. The male staff wore white shirts, and the female staff were tarted up just as the poster promised. One was playing at a table and the other was tripping around delivering the customers' drinks and snacks, the third was nowhere to be seen.

What was surprising was number of young players in the parlour. It is often said that in the age of computer and tv games fewer young people take up mahjong nowadays. But tonight, with no Kenyon to bring down our group's average age, ours was the oldest group in the parlour.

Once they'd recovered from the site of three foreigners (plus Noda) traipsing into their parlour and asking for a table set up for the three-player game, they placed us in the far corner and went through the rigmarole of explaining how everything worked.

There was some confusion over the scoring tallies because the colour coding was different and one of the metal score tallies was actually a dummy to make the machine's electronic displays register the correct score.

Every time we ordered beer we were given a choice of side dish - processed cheese, salami or sausage. The sausage turned out to be quite good and became the de-rigour choice, until they decided that we had ordered too many beers to warrant any more snacks and ceased to give us a choice of anything at all.

Another feature of the place was that when someone declared Riichi at some of the tables not only would the table sound system cry out "Riichi da zo" but at some tables (not ours, thank goodness) the staff would give a sort of ritual cry of encouragement which resounded around the parlour.

Ray wondered whether people didn't stay overnight since there was a supply of razors in the gents conveniences.

We were all seated comfortably, Jaime settled nicely in the chair with its back to the room, and David sat with his back to the wall and a good view of the surroundings, which included an expanse of naked female back - not that the female was naked in toto, merely that her top plunged towards her bottom if you see what I mean. I might have gratified your curiosity with a discrete photo had I had the chance to take one, but Noda had performed the seat allocation ritual and Jaime and I had to swap seats and the back was now on my blind side.


Noda was the first player to hit trouble. His game appeared to be faltering when he gave away a Double Ron to Ray (Oya) and Jaime. The much heralded Ray recovery appeared to be in the making.

Then David went out on Daisangen in the first game and announced it loudly enough for the surrounding tables to hear as if to impress upon the insular native mind that it is not entirely impossible for your Johnny foreigner to play a game which was, after all, invented by Johnny foreigners, albeit of another hue.

Apart from that early promise, things unravelled for the Poor Little Cypriot. In two hands Noda had taken back everything he'd won with that Daisangen hand. The PLC was then distracted by his Mrs who sent a text message to inform him that she'd forgotten her house key and was locked out and wondered whether he wouldn't mind going home early to facilitate her entrance. Perhaps anticipating the answer, she had decided to drive through town to refresh herself at the hot baths and so at a convenient moment while Ray was Oya David charged out of the parlour to hand over the key. No sooner had he left the parlour than Noda completed his hand so the players had to wait for him to return from chasing down his Mrs.

If David's game had been beset by unlooked for trials, Jaime's was fairing no better. In the second he found himself with sixteen tiles in his hand for tonight's only Chombo (David, the Chombo champ, had a Chombo-free evening).

David was hit with a Double Ron in the third game.

Meanwhile, Noda reversed his fortunes at everybody's expense by winning three games on the trot, +92, +53, +70 to reach his evening's high of +183 on the score card while David headed in the opposite direction, registering his evening's low of -113, thereby opening up a big gap between first and second positions on the Accumulated Points Chart.

Ray recovered his early form in the fifth and final game to check Noda's advance. David also did better in that game, whereas Jaime suffered his customary "last game collapse" to finish bottom for the evening.

Noda has been in top form in recent weeks, and tonight's score would appear to have pretty much secured him top spot for the year unless he suffers a dramatic loss of form and David or some other player enjoys a dramatic run of victories, something which I somehow doubt will occur...


Noda -32,* +92, +53, +70, -22 = +161
Ray +66, -38, -46, -6, +44 = +20
===
David -29, -20, -24,* -40, +24 = -89
Jaime -5, -34.** +17, -24, -46 = -92

* Double Ron
** Chombo

David Hurley
Japanese-Mahjong.com
Japanese-Games-Shop.com

Friday 1st June: Noda Commits a Chombo & Charges On (Assisted By David)

Having gone without lunch, David was perfectly happy to receive a message from Kenyon that he was stuck on a bus in a traffic jam caused by the Toukasan festival as that gave him time to chomp his way through Kodama Mama-san's ample serving of yakimeshi without having to concentrate on the flow of the game and keep his hand in order at the same time.

There were three players for the early part of the evening, Noda, David and Kenyon, while Hide came along with his missus a bit later on.

I don't have the score sheet to hand as I write this but I can remember all too well how the evening panned out...

Noda won a lot. Hide ended up on zero. Kenyon lost quite a little. David lost quite a lot.

There was one moment of fumble-bumble on Kenyon's part which led to a unique form of Chombo by a somewhat aggrieved Noda. Kenyon reached over to take a tile from the wall on the other side of the table and dropped it as he brought it towards his wall. It crashed the end of his discard pile and propelled the 9-Bamboo into the tiles in his hand. When Kenyon had sorted everything out he replaced the 9-Bamboo at the beginning of his discard pile. The whole episode had been observed by both David and Hide with some mild amusement, which turned to bemusement and then hilarity when Noda looked up from a deep contemplation of his hand. Seeing the 9-Bamboo appear on the table, and oblivious to what had been going on, he declared a rather reluctant "Ron!"and showed his hand!

Poor old Noda's nose was put out of joint by the universal declaration of "Chombo!" He argued for a while that it was really Kenyon's fault and that that sort of thing would be construed as tricky play in less salubrious company. But there was little choice but to pay up. It put paid to whatever hand it was that Noda had and also had the effect of subduing the Noda charge for a while - it was the only game he finished in negative territory for the evening.

However, that was not the most foolish action of the evening because David had yet to make his contribution. With Noda showing two sets of open Dragons within the first five discards of the hand, David rather blithely decided to chuck out a Chun (Red Dragon) to achieve Tenpai. He was aware of Noda's Dragons but claims that his inhibitions had been removed by the intake of booze and the fact that he was the Oya and - what the heck - it was only the fifth discard into the hand, dammit. He had overlooked the fact that while it was indeed "only" the fifth discard into a hand in which Noda was showing two sets of Dragons while enjoying a spring roll - I mean a springtime recovery of form.

Ron! - Daisangen! Yakuman, 32,000 points please!

It was a foolish throw anyway, since if Noda had claimed the Chun by going Pon David would have been liable to pay the whole fine to Noda no matter how and off whom he had gone out.

At some stage in the evening Kenyon completed Kokushimusou on Tsumo.

David got stuck with his Yakitori in the fourth game and only managed to finish ahead in the sixth and ninth games.

Noda wandered off home at about 1am and the other three played on until about 3am, some considerable time after Hide's missus had fallen asleep on Mama's sofa.

By the end of the evening Noda and David had changed places on the Grand Accumulated Points Chart and it is only Tsuyoshi-san's victory on the one evening he played that stands between Noda and the top-spot...

===
Saturday 9th June

Here is the score sheet:

Noda +29, +18, +2, +55, -6, +18, --, --, -- = +116
Hide --, --, +38. -39, 0, -26, -10, +47, -10 = 0
===
Kenyon -12, -6, -1, +26, +23, -40, +31, -20, -19 = -18,
David -17, -12, -39, -42,* -17, +48, -21, -27, +29 = -98

David Hurley
japanese-mahjong.com
japanese-games-shop.com