Hiroshima Cock's-Eye Mahjong News & Other Stuff

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

2009-06-04T00:28:00.004+09:00

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?

2009-05-11T23:49:00.003+09:00

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

2009-05-05T23:23:00.008+09:00

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.

2009-04-26T23:35:00.006+09:00

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

2009-04-19T18:01:00.008+09:00

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!

2009-04-03T17:01:00.001+09:00

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...

2009-03-28T19:38:00.012+09:00

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.

Mr Incredible Recieves His Prize...

2009-01-30T17:17:00.005+09:00

I received very precise instructions from the Secretary of the Central Committee of the Cock's Eye Mahjong Club appertaining to the procuring of a suitable prize for the 2008 Japanese Three Player Champion, who happens to be Mr Noda, for the third year in succession.

The prize had to be:

Not too expensive
Something he could actually use

So bald eagles rampant upon craggy rocks were out this year, then.

To those criteria I took the liberty of adding two more:

Nothing that would NOT prove odious to the discriminating sensibilities of Mrs N
Something with some reference to the abilities of our doughty champion

The result, after much searching in the basement of Book Off, which is a veritable treasury of discarded junk, bald eagles rampant upon craggy rocks, sumo wrestlers cunningly fashioned clay and so forth, I found something to satisfy all parties, even Mr Noda...

A Mr Incredible Mobile Phone Strap

With Plastic Model Of Mr Incredible Attached

(price, 105 yen, inc. tax)

As you can see from the photo, Mr Noda, dressed in his customary winter casuals (see Jan 2008, Jan 2007...), received his prize in good spirits, commenting that "size doesn't matter".

Well done Mr Incredible, you are the mahjong champ for the third year running...

DH
http://japanese-mahjong.com/

Ray Keeps His End Up And The Pussy Down

2009-01-30T16:58:00.004+09:00

Here are the results for the last game of 2008...
Friday 12th December

Noda had won the competition so long ago that it is really not worth commenting upon. There were a couple of questions to be resolved further down the table, chiefly among the foreign players...

Would Jaime's remarkable run of luck enable him to finish the year in the black?
Would David's miserable fortune keep him nailed to the bottom or would he manage a dead cat bounce?
Or would Ray keep his end up and keep the bouncing pussy down?

Here is the second page of the score sheet. I am not sure what happened to the first page, but seeing as how this game was played about six weeks ago, it is a wonder I still have any record of it at all:

Page 2 of the Scoresheet

Jaime (+26), +62, +24 = +112
Noda (+62), --, --, = +62
===
David (-47), -10, 0 = -57
Ray (-41), -52,* -24* = -117

* Double Ron

As can be seen, Jaime came top and so finished the year in the black.

Meanwhile, David and Ray shed points, more or less by the same rate in the first half of the evening, but then Ray got clobbered with Double Ron in two games and sank to the bottom for the evening, while David "recovered" by only shedding 10.

Ray had done enough by not losing even more to avoid coming bottom for the year.

David, second place, in the black and top foreigner last year, picks up his second plastic duck in three years.

http://japanese-mahjong.com

Of Malayan Emergencies And Apple Diets

2008-11-28T14:36:00.003+09:00

I arrived a little bit earlier than usual at the Docs' last night so Dr. M. Sr. and I entertained ourselves with some cheerful chat about warfare, particularly a somewhat doctored version, if I may put it like that, of what my late pater had been up to during the Malayan Emergency in the mid '50s. In two words, building airstrips, or, in a few more, overseeing the admin involved in building airstrips (for the typewriter is mightier than the Sten gun).

I seem to recall tales of how one benighted pioneer was persuaded that you really could bounce Land Rovers off rubber trees and that the best way to start a cement mixer was to bump start it; of the squadron short-arse being dropped into a firing trench and left stranded; of perimeter guards fearlessly repelling a nocturnal assault by wild boar, and... I could go on recalling tales from the long room of my childhood, but Dr. M. Jr. has just come rushing in so let the game commence.

The first game was quite a swift affair and won by Dr. M. Jr. True to my recent form, I came in fourth, but happily for a game that involves the Batsu/Maru penalty and rewards system, the senior parties were also losers.

The second game was a more extended affair with the players being very cagey and several hands went without result. There were also a few games where two or even three players declared Riichi but the game played out without a winner. What did result from that, however, was that the Junior Doc was Oya during a Ryanshi round, which I went out on when Mrs M gave away the tile in attempting to go Riichi.

At the end of the second game, I had managed to get myself into second place for the evening, with Dr. M. Jr in top spot. By now it was twenty to eleven, which is usually early enough for us to play a third game, but I was keen to call it a night, and catch the tram home - while I was ahead!

The doctors then asked me if I liked apples! Yet another of their satisfied patients had presented them with two boxes of huge apples, far more than they can cope with, so they loaded me up with as many as I could carry - 21 in all - and sent me on my way, so the painful memories of recent losses at the 3-Player game have been somewhat... somewhat... dissipated. This morning I went on an "Asa-ringo Dietto"!

David Hurley
http://japanese-mahjong.com

A Blazing Good Session...

2008-11-28T13:47:00.004+09:00

It was an "Old Foreigners" game last Friday. Two of them, David and Jaime, had bought cuban cigars at Kemby's, or rather at the bar on the second floor of Kemby's.

We were rather hoping to smoke out the Japanese players on the other tables, but when we got to Kodama jansou we found that we were the only party. Another group turned up a while later, but did not stay for long, perhaps due to the volume of smoke that we puffed out.

Wasn't it Kipling who said something about mahjong being just a game, but a good cigar is a smoke? This would not be the moment to contract him. I seem to remember as I blazed away that Jaime did rather well out of his cigar, although the non-smoking Ray won the first game, probably before the smoke got in his eyes.

I seem to recall that things did not go so well with The Poor Little Cypriot. The worse piece of luck for him during the evening was when he dropped his cigar into the water that sits at the bottom of a Japanese ashtray. The Poor Little Cypriot had to chop his end off and blaze away all over again.

It was all very distressing. He was vaguely aware that Jaime, as Oya, had gone Pon on the Haku and Hatsu dragons and that Ray had thrown out a Chun earlier on, but when he sought to preserve his Tempai hand by tossing out another Chun he was caught out by Jaime's (in retrospect) rather obvious Chun-tanki Shosangen wait. What with lighting the cigar and running out of beer all the time, The Poor Little Cypriot really had his hands full.

There was a brief window of lucidity amidst the fug of war when the PLC managed to win the third game, but Ray, the quiet non-smoker, promptly replied with his second win of the evening. It would have been prudent to have called it a night at that point, but we played through four more games, all of which Jaime won, three of them outright.

The result saw Jaime move up into the coveted "Top Gaijin" spot. Ray would have made a new bottom record had not The PLC overtaken him on the way down to finish at the bottom of the table perilously close to breaking into the minus five-hundreds...

Somehow or other, The PLC avoided the ignimony of joining his pals in commiting a Chombo.

And so, at around 3:30am, another blazing good session drew to a close.

Jaime -7, +73, -10, -13, +72,* +39, +21 = +175
===
Ray +19, -8, -22, +21, -50, +5,* -16 = -51
David -12, -65, +32, -8, -22, -44, -5 = -124

* Chombo

David Hurley
http://japanese-mahjong.com

Nobu was also there...

2008-11-28T13:41:00.002+09:00

I don't know about Noda going senile... I completely forgot to mention the presence of Nobu in my previous blog; but there he most definitely was. He even drove me home afterwards!

Nobu is a pretty quiet sort of chap at the mahjong table. He has a disconcerting habit of nodding and smiling when you discard a tile that he doesn't need, which makes you think the opposite is the case!

However, he does give you ample warning when he has something good in his hand because he looks up his hand in his Japanese mahjong rules book. Despite this handicap, however, he finished the evening in the black for the first time ever with a final score of +10!

Well done Nobu (and thanks for the lift home)!

Of Senility And Arrant Orgiastic Power

2008-11-21T14:44:00.003+09:00

Last Friday the Old Guard (Noda, David) and one detachment of the Middle Guard (Jaime) formed up around the corner table of Kodama jansou.

David arrived from a TOEFL class which he terminated early as there was only one student and she raced through the alloted tasks in double-quick time. That meant that he could enjoy his traditional dish of Mama's yaki-meshi setto at his leisure before the commencement of hostilities.

David has been reading Han Suyin's mid 20th century classic Hong Kong novel, A Many Splendoured Thing, and chatted cheerfully to Noda about it while awaiting the advent of Jaime.

There are some fine passages, but this one stands out:

Since we are, each one of us, unequal, and equal opportunity does not exist, I have never been able to understand why one should not accept to do evil as well as good, and with just as much clarity. I have a deep suspicion of philanthropists and do-gooders generally. I believe in relationships between people, devotion to friends, sticking to principle, and the pursuit of the absolute in oneself, not of perfection to impose upon others. I am feudal and a Taoist, and use despotism with enlightenment, for I am a doctor. One has to impose upon the sick one's own will, and anything else is hypocrisy and nonsense. Doctors use power so much and get so much pleasure out of it... This is arrant, orgiastic power, the most corrupting one to the soul: that of doing good. p. 110

Once the game got underway, David continued on his recent point-shedding form, while Noda exhibited signs of going senile to the extent that he could not even remember how to say the word "senile" in Japanese.

The prospect of David and Jaime being able, with clarity, to do their devoted friend Noda the evil of clobbering him while he was wallowing in senility was somewhat called into question when Noda turned over a completed Kokushimusou hand.

There was one bright moment of clobbering Noda on David's part Midway through the evening when David, needing just the 1-Coin to finish declared "Riichi" with the 4-Coins and 7-Coins in his discard pile. Noda, himself now Tempai, pushed out the 1-Coin which led to a spontaneous eruption of joy from David that the Old Devil had just for once fallen into the trap... Of course, Noda had been aware of the danger, but had no better option available. It just makes a change to see Noda given the squeeze!

Then in the last game it began to look like "business as usual" as Noda, second South Oya, began winning hands and racking up 100-tenbou. Noda took his revenge on David for showing overmuch pleasure in that 1-Coin result, and by the time Noda was toppled from the Oya-ship, David's tray had been emptied.

It was during Noda's Oya-ship that David had begun to play with the careless abandon of a lost soul, while expatiating on how when the luck is not with you - ever (as it seemed) - you might just as well take no thought for the morrow and hurl out tiles at random.

Remarkably, it was at that point that David's luck began to turn. Actually, now I think about it, it is often the case that a person's luck has already turned at the moment of most wounded complaint, as with Jaime's oft heard mantra of

"I'm out of luck tonight... Riichi... Tsumo!"

Thus it was that on the last Oya-ship of the evening, the chief luck-bewailer of the night, David, with arrant orgiastic power, made a Last Stand that refilled his tray with Jaime's score sticks, ended the evening top dog, and climbed off the bottom of the Grand Accumulated Points Chart, while Noda crept into the black with just enough points to set a new "best score" record on the same table.

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

Foiled By The Malevolence Of Fortune

2008-11-14T16:14:00.004+09:00

Friday 7th November was one of those evenings at the games table when the tiles always looked promising to the Poor Little Cypriot and were almost always treacherous.

There was the case of being Tempai after four turns, but on such a dreadful wait that it was pointless to go for it. The Poor Little Cypriot needed the 8-Bamboo to finish, but two had already been discarded by the other players and one was the Mekuri-pai, turned over in the wall. Things were still not so bad since the 7 and 9 of Bamboo were safe to throw... but by the time the Poor Little Cypriot had rearranged - or confused - his tiles, somebody else had completed their hand.

There was the case of being Tempai after six turns with a choice of a safe discard and a two-tile wait, or a more risky 3-Coin discard and a three-tile wait. The PLC wanted to improve his probability of taking the had and threw the 3-Coins, which Noda was waiting for to go out on.

There was the case... well, there were so many cases that it felt like the lost baggage depot of Terminal 5 at Heathrow.

Terminal. A most apt description of the PLC's game. Such was the malevolence of Fortune that by the end of the evening the PLC had dropped four places in the Grand Accumulated Points Table rankings to land on the/his bottom.

Part of the problem, of course, was that Noda had lost the week before and so it was to be expected that he would be on the hunt. Jaime also seemed to want to rise to the minus-200s for the first time in a while.

The year end is drawing nigh and with only a few sessions remaining none of the foreign players can yet be confident of not hitting the bottom, but nor can the PLC be confident of ever getting off his bottom... Our only hope is that Mr Nobu will find some time to play and prove rather rusty...

Noda +62, -20, +50, +7 = +99
Jaime -2, +54, -4, +22 = +70
===
David -60, -34, -46, -29 = -169

Twilight Zone Mahjong

2008-11-07T16:14:00.006+09:00

Kenyon reports on the action at Kodama last Friday. He was the only foreign player up against Noda, Hide and Kiyo...

How did he do?

Friday 31st October
Kodama Jansou
Hiroshima

After finding out that Dave was unavailable, Hide contacted me to tell me that he had the day off so he contacted Noda and we got an early game of Mahjong underway.

It started with me, Noda and Hide, with Kiyo joining us later after he finished watching his favorite TV drama, apparently about a "host club". I pressed Hide for more info, but there was none coming. Apparently Kiyo has some interesting hobbies.

Anyways things got underway very quickly, with me flying out to an early lead getting up to Rianshi on my first Oya-ship, after taking Noda's Oya away from him. However Hide dominated the rest of the match to win the first round in strong fashion, with Noda absorbing most of the damage.

Then we started our seesaw battle, with me winning the next two games and Hide taking the brunt of the damage putting me ahead. Hide then won game four to make the game close.

Kiyo showed up for the fifth game which started off in a very unusual way. After the last game ended I slipped off to the bathroom , and they distributed the tiles while I was away. But when I got back and counted my tiles I had only 12, which is a problem, but since I was clearly uninvolved they didn't mind me grabbing number 13. However the real problem was that Noda himself had 14 tiles, picking up a Chombo in quick fashion.

Hide won game five as well, moving back into the lead. Game six was the one game all evening where Noda finished up, with me second and in the positive to take the lead back.

Hide won game 7 to take the lead back, and I took game 8 to move to within two points for the race of the evening and Noda took leave of us, with a rare poor evening finishing on -104, with 7 games in the negative and a Chombo.

With Noda gone Kiyo really got into his groove. He took game 7, but I was well positive on +28, which meant that Hide went from first to -4 all at once.

Kiyo won game 10 to end the evening, and make the results for the evening a reverse of the yearly scores, with me in first and positive, Kiyo second and positive, Hide in third and in the negative, and Noda a distant fourth.

The highlights for the evening were the high number of Rianshi's with Oya's really controlling play, lots of quickly ending hands, and a number of Yakuman Tenpais but no Yakuman finishes.

Here are the scores:

Kenyon: -18, +41, +42, -8, -11, +5, -23, +47, +28, -31 = +72
Kiyo: --, --, --, --, -5, -24, +4, -23, +53, +28 = +33
===
Hide: +73, -31, -37, +20, +38, -26, +28, +12, -81, +3 = -1
Noda: -55, -10, -5, -12, -22*, +45, -9, -36, --, -- = -104

* Noda's chombo

KC

Thanks for filing the report, Kenyon and well done for recouping all your losses from last week ago and some more!

Drowning In Beer At The Doc's

2008-11-07T16:01:00.003+09:00

My fortunes at standard Japanese mahjong have been rather mixed lately.

I play a short game on some Friday afternoons in what was originally an English class but has, by student demand, morphed into a 90 minute mahjong session, just enough for either a single game played at learners' pace, or a couple of quick games if nobody manages to retain the Oya for long.

One of the students is a complete beginner, and the other is a regular social player.

Yes, there are only three players in our session, but we play regular four-player mahjong with two exceptions. As in the three-player variation, the North tile becomes a bonus and the mekuri-pai is turned over five tiles back from the end of the wall.

It is not a bad way to earn some pocket money between college classes on a Friday afternoon.

Meanwhile, the monthly mahjong party at the Doc's were resumed last Thursday after a break for the summer. My form in these games has been a bit off recently, and so it was once again last week. Doctor M thinks it is because I sink under the weight of the booze that is served up. He might be right. I do rather drown in beer at the Doc's, but hospitality is always so difficult a thing to turn down. One would hate to put one's hosts out.

I recouped a little mula at the end of the evening by walking along the line of taxis until I found one that charges only an initial fee of ¥560. Taxi fares went up recently due to the cost of fuel, so the standard fare is no ¥610, up from ¥580. So, to find a taxi that only charges ¥560 was quite a surprise.

His Leaf Also Shall Not Wither...

2008-11-07T15:36:00.004+09:00

On Friday 24th October Noda, David, Jaime were joined by Kenyon, who hadn't been around for a while.

Kenyon promptly won the first game on a healthy +67 and went out with Suuanko in one of the early hands, but it turned out to be no more than a subsidy for the rest of his evening!

Each of the other players then took it in turns to finish top, first David, who also went out on a Suuanko hand, then Jaime, then Noda, whose fourth game +72 put him on +5 for the night.

After Noda had left, David strung together a winning streak of three games on the trot, a relatively unusual occurrence late on a Friday night these days. His seat was as a tree planted by a river; bringing forth fruit in due season, and his leaf withered not.

As for Kenyon, it was not so with him. He was like chaff which the Winds scattered from the face of the table. It was he who most keenly felt the injustice of being robbed on Tempai, or proto-Tempai, or even pre-proto-Tempai.

David -49, +66, +2, -24, +26, +57, +32 = +115
Noda -20, -11, -36, +72, --, --, -- = +5
===
Jaime 0, -25, +50, -5, -3, +7, -22 = -18
Kenyon +69, -30, -16, -43, -23, -64, -10 = -97

The Tightening Of The Bottom

2008-10-24T16:39:00.002+09:00

Meanwhile, Ray was in town and he, Tim and Jaime were ensconsed in Kemby's sinking a few preliminary beers and were joined in this endeavour by David a while later.

David had had the shock of hearing a voice like Noda's shouting at him from across the street just as he was about to barrel into Kemby's. Noda was not supposed to be there, but there he was... It turned out that Hide had called up Noda because nobody else was in Kodama when he and Kiyo arrived. Noda had said that he would not be playing that night, but returning home earlier than expected, he was able to respond to the call and join them for a game. Hence it was not the ghost of Noda, but the very devil himself who had yelled in such a disconcerting manner across the street.

Armed with the salutary knowledge that there were enough players at Kodama to play and not be put out by our not being there, the foreign contingent thought it not unmeet to extend their beer swilling by an hour or so. Not only would they be all the better for the swilling, but they would probably be able to set up shop on their own table, which would guarantee that at least one foreigner would win that evening!

Such is the poor form of the foreign contingent at present, and the overarching dominance of Mr Noda, that moral is rather low at present.

The ruse worked! Better still, the news was that Noda was losing!

When battle commenced on the foreigners' table two of the foreigners believed that the plan was that Ray, currently playing the role of Atlas, would not mind losing again since the bottom is the bottom. Unfortunately, Ray did not see things like that and had the temerity to win and close the gap as the other two foreigners sank a bit more into the mire.

So with the top player losing, and the bottom player winning, the gap, while still remaining absurdly HUGE, did not get any more absurdly hugerer.

Hide was the outright winner on the Japanese table, which puts him into second place above Satoru. That shows you how poor the form has been this year by all players except for Noda. Satoru popped in one evening a few months ago, played three games and was in second place until tonight.

Friday 17th October: Bottom Squeeze

The turning point of last week's game was Jaime's lengthy run as Oya, which wiped out most of Noda and Hide's losses and lasted about an hour - an hour during which David was able to sit on his moderate losses and feel good about it!

Jaime was top when David and Noda baled out. Kiyo was waiting for game so Jaime and Hide stayed... Hide then recovered and Jaime started trench digging and prepared for a war of attrition.

The result was that Noda, who came second, had extended his lead at the top. Hide lost ground but is still in second place. Kiyo dropped into the red, and something of a relegation battle is now under way at the bottom:

Nobuhiro 18 3 1 -334
David 91 2 3 -345
Jaime 92 5 3 -347
Ray 56 0 1 -377

Ah yes, the autumn term is here and the year end slide upon us!

What will tonight bring? Kenyon and Nobu are rumoured to be joining Noda and David tonight...

Jaime is unwell...

Please Would Somebody Shoot Noda!

2008-09-16T12:17:00.004+09:00

All is doom and gloom among the foreign contingent of the Cock's-Eye 3-Player Mahjong Club this year.

Last Friday was another episode of Noda beating up the foreigners, especially in the second game when the Poor Little Cypriot, who was quite happy finishing the first on zero, suddenly found himself looking at an empty tray and racking up the debts to Noda and also to Jaime.

Mind you, there was one enjoyable moment when Noda committed an elementary Chombo by going Riichi and claiming a tile that Jaime threw after checking Noda's discard pile! Of course, Jaime happened to have a hand with numerous bonuses with should have, could have, if-only-he-hadn't-would-have raked in a large pile of score sticks. That game was the only point in the evening when anybody (Jaime) apart from Noda was in the black.

So, Noda commits his second September Chombo. Perhaps we should not have laughed and whooped so much, because he went on to win the next game +57

For the Poor Little Cypriot, the most irritating point of the evening was not losing the second game -99, but getting caught by Noda at some point during the last game of the evening. Noda went Riichi after about three tiles, yet again. He discarded Coin after Coin, and both foreign players avoided giving anything away for a while. But, near the end of the hand, the PLC had run out of safe Coins to discard. Noda's discard row showed ONLY Coins. The PLC had 10 x dodgy looking Bamboo, a North bonus (when three were already out), and a pair of dodgy 1-Characters, with none showing on the table. The PLC chose not to expose the fourth North, and rather than throw a Bamboo, threw one of the dodgy Characters.

"RON!"

Of course, Noda had been waiting with a vicious double head of 9-Coins and 1-Characters, as Oya, with a stack of bonuses, for a total payout of 28,000 points.

If mechanical mahjong tables were not so heavy, the PLC would have cheerfully turned the table upside down and emptied the contents on Noda's head. But they are, so he didn't. He ordered another beer instead.

Noda jumps from the +1,100s to the +1,300s while the foreigners sink deeper into the mire.

I seem to remember that that Vladimir Lenin fellow wrote a book called "What Is To Be Done?" Perhaps we ought to start reading it.

Noda +39, +99, -28,* +57 = +157
===
Jaime -29, 0, +35, -40 = -34
David 0, -99, -7, -17 = -123

* Noda Chombo! (Claimed Jaime's 9-Bamboo discard, despite having discarded one himself.)

David Hurley

Japanese-Mahjong.com

The Doctors Prescribe A Remedy With Unpredictable Side Effects...

2008-09-15T21:48:00.005+09:00

On my last trip to the doctor's I was asked a few questions about my drinking habits...

"Can you drink Asahi Super Dry?"

DH: "Well, yes, I do sometimes drink Asahi Super Dry. Yes, indeed."

"Ah so desu ka... How about Kirin Original Brew?"

DH: "Oh yes, I quite often drink that one."

"What about Yebisu All Malt Beer?"

DH: "Oh, um, well yes, I don't mind if I do on occasion."

"Do you drink wine as well?"

DH: "Yes, I do like a little drop with my dinner."

"Ah so ka! And you like cheese..."

DH: "Ooh yes, I am partial to cheese."

"Ah yokatta! Good! We received many summer gifts. Please take some when you go home."

DH: "Thank you very much."

Having given me a thorough diagnosis of the situation I was immediately served the first of I forget how many Kirin Lagers from the fridge as the doctors felt that treatment was urgent.

I forget the details of the game. I remember that it was my fault that the mechanical table broke, when I shoved some tiles down the wrong slot because I was a bit slow to react.

I seem to remember that Mrs M won rather a lot of hands and that I came bottom. Well, after such good treatment it would have been rude not to!

The game finished quite early, early enough for me to save the hefty taxi fare by legging it to the station and catching the train. I envisaged carrying a couple of bags with some beer cans wine bottles, not too great an impediment. However, when I got to the door I was presented with three presentation boxes of beer and a presentation box of wine (two bottles) plus a slab of cheese the size of a breeze block... The junior doctor helped me cart them away to the nearest taxi!

===

I was drinking my way through my prescription medicine the other night and reading Peter Pan to my daughter when the tefelone rang and immediately clicked over to the answering machine. I heard the pleasant tones of my old pal (and reprobate) Mr Merin Waite dragging me away from Never Land.

At least, I THOUGHT the person who was telephoning me from England was Merin. After 3 minutes or so of chat, in which he told me he was in Guildford, which was news to me, I started to regale him with a detailed account of how we had been out on a boat fishing in the Inland Sea with Old Satoru, the herbal medicine voodoo doctor fellow, who sticks needles in people and sets fire to small pyramids of herbal extract on their buttocks and indulges, I doubt not, in other arcane and superstitious practices that a large number of the natives of these parts persist in clinging on to (even though there are perfectly kosher doctors such as the Doctors M in whose company I passed a merry evening of mahjong recently). When my "friend", the supposed reprobate Mr Merin Waite, persisted in not knowing who I was talking about, I put it to him in no uncertain terms that he must be some lesser spotted species of a blithering imbecile...

... at which point the voice on the other end of the line pointed out that I must have the wrong person. It further elaborated in tones that suggested its owner was somewhat put out, that not only was the speaker to whom it belonged NOT this Merlin fellow, but that he had never heard of him, and that he was in fact a customer telephoning about a mahjong order... just as we had arranged a few nights ago in an exchange of email.

Ah yes. I remember now! It certainly put a new spin on the old phrase "caveat emptor"!!

I must take this opportunity to thank my customer, Mr I. F., for his long-suffering tolerance at the hands of that reprobate Merin Waite, who ever seeks after crafty and malicious ways to persecute me when I least suspect it.

Mahjong & Other Political Games

2008-09-12T14:58:00.004+09:00

Two weeks ago Kenyon returned to the table from his summer holidays. Tim was present for a beer and the talk inevitably turned towards Barack Obama's acceptance speech.

I shall spare the blogosphere yet another ramble on the intertwined subjects of BO's prospects, policies, race and religion.

Far more important than those political games is the effect that BO - or more to the point, Tim's talking to Kenyon about BO - had on Kenyon's ability to concentrate on mahjong.

I don't know if BO plays mahjong, but I sure hope he can concentrate if ever he happens to be fondling the Nuclear-War-A-Go-Go button while Joe Biden is engaging him in some pleasant chat about the mad mullahs of Persia or the oil moguls of Moscow.

That was when it looked as if BO and JB might actually make it to the Whitehouse...

A week later and it was Jaime who was the returning holiday maker, playing along side Ray and David, with Tim once again in attendance.

This week it was JMcC (the Scottish JC??) who had taken the American presidential election campaign by the coglioni by finding himself attached to a naughty-but-nice leggy VPC&MJMcC(&O)WL2F* hailing from a melting igloo somewhere near the North Pole.

Nice legs. Ideal for a running mate.

That - or perhaps I should say "those" since SP has two legs - and Russia's "First Western-Style War" against Poor Little Sucker-Willy of Georgia - gave us plenty to distract ourselves over...

...but remarkably, apart from a few comedy spillages of mahjong tiles all over SP's legs, a grip on the game was retained.

Whereas the former top foreign player in the ratings, Kenyon, came back from his holidays and came a cropper, the former bottom player came back from his holidays and staged a recovery mostly at Ray's expense, and only capped at the end of the evening by the long awaited Ray Revival...

But Ray's revival was not enough to stop him from replacing Jaime on the bottom of the pile.

Six games were played at Jantopia, despite the malfunctioning table.

David received one more beer than he called for as mother seems to be a bit deaf and can't tell the difference between a late night cry of "Omizu kudasaiiii" and "Obeeeruuu kudasaiii".

The score sheet got lost but the final scores are etched in Jaime's memory, which has a remarkable capacity for storing all sorts of trivia...

Six games were played, and the results were:

Jaime +67

===

David -6

Ray -61**

* Vice Presidential Candidate & Mother John McCain (& Others) Would &c...

** Yakitori x 1

David H

Japanese-Mahjong.com

A Message From The Wild Wastes Of Northern England...

2008-09-01T08:23:00.004+09:00

A message was received from one of the members of the Cock's Eye Club from the somewhere in the wild wastes of the north of England...

Summer has ceased to exist in England it seems, the weather has been truly horrendous. The occasional warmish day has been annihilated by the onslaught of the rain and wind.

Tim and I played some golf last week, on Friday i broke new ground on a golf course - I walked off after just 5 holes. Tim, being either a hardened Yorkshire man, or just plainly nuts went on to play all 18 holes. The gale force wind I could take, heavy rain soaking through my wet gear too was acceptable, even the temperature hovering around the low teens was manageable, but when hail rained downed like a Biblical god, I had had enough. Never have I been so cold and wet on a golf course. And the date - 22nd August....

I took sanctuary in the club house, with a hot drink, a whisky (i hate whisky) and a pint whilst Tim braved the elements. I have some great photos which I will put on the blog, Tim emerging from the rain as though he had just tramped out of the ocean...

Jaime

No Sour Grapes From Noda...

2008-08-28T23:45:00.004+09:00

Noda, Ray and David arranged an Obon holiday season game of mahjong but neglected to inform Mama-san at Kodama, who shut up shop in order to go and pray at her ancestors' ancient monument as is the custom of the inhabitants of these islands so to do.

Noda had spent the sweltering day tending his vinyard, or at least his vine, and had brought with him a bag full of grapes, a small sample of which if offered to Ray the David as they strolled off in search of a mahjong parlour that was open for business.

We ended up in a small place that we'd never been to before in the Tatemachi area, a second floor establishment of the second order. Ray and David were apparently the first foreigners to cross the threshold of the joint and in such circumstances it is always good policy to let Noda take the lead.

Noda softened up the floor manager by offering him a large bunch of grapes.

Ray muttered something about the next joint down the street which is a larger, jollier sort of place with rather sporting bunny girls on call to serve drinks and snacks and offer other services such as sitting in on a game or two.

The only sign of female company our hosts could offer us was a dwarfish specimen of uncertain years who would emerge from one of the private rooms when it was her turn away from the table. It is presumed that she was involved in a game of 3-player mj , and from time to time she would come barrelling out of her hole faster than a cuckoo pops out of his clock, and plonk herself down in front of the television to commentate on the progress of the Japanese team in the Olympic Games.

David won the first two games in spiffing form, clobbering Ray once again with a mighty Suuanko.

Noda seemed to be suffering from a mixture of booze and sunstroke and had turned into jelly. He treated us to the unprecedented site of committing a Chombo by gathering an impressive collection of 15 tiles, something which he protested that he had never achieved in his life heretofore.

That was the low point of Noda's evening, and possibly of his life. Sadly, nobody thought to photograph the epochal event.

As I say, though, it was the low point of Noda's evening.

We had changed seats after the second game, with David on +118 and Ray on -91, but Ray took over the seat that David had been winning in and immediately began to claw back his losses. By the time of Noda's Chombo Ray had got himself back to -14 and Noda's bottom was firmly on the bottom, his feet were treading the winepress alone, and that is where we should have left it.

Sadly, we played the last game!

Oh, if only we could stop before the last game!

Noda won it, of course, and recovered all but five of his lost points and so the final scores were quite modest.

Ray strolled off to his hotel and Noda and David hopped into a taxi, and as it zoomed off Noda suddenly leapt off his seat as if he had been lolling in the electric chair at Sing-Sing and some practical joker had suddenly turned on the juice.

However, it was nothing serious: "I left the grapes at the mahjong parlour," he said.

Well, I trust they did not set the parlour manager's teeth on edge.

David +73, +45, -19, 0, -29, -31 = +39
===
Noda -12, -15, +2, -20, -11,** +51 = -5
Ray -61, -30, +17, +20, +40, -20 = -34

** Noda's unprecedented 15-tile Chombo!

Noda Marches On As Foreigners Sink In The Mire

2008-08-15T16:32:00.005+09:00

This was not a good night for foreign players! It was probably all the fault of the Poor Little Cypriot. When Noda was on his first hand as Oya the PLC moved off Tempai to try and build a pure bamboo hand, a tactic that backfired and that went against every principle of play when Noda is Oya!

While the PLC did indeed end up with 13 Bamboo tiles in his hand, he was still one off Tempai when Noda went out. Worse still, Noda went on to rack up about eight or so hyaku tembou, and by the time he relinquished the Oya the PLC was in hock to the tune of about 30,000 points. It was thoroughly deserved, and the score for the first game tells the story: Noda +116, David -116, Ray 0!

The second game saw one of the recoveries of the year, however, as the PLC found himself with a Suuanko-Tanki wait on 3-Coins, but also with the option of going out on 2 or 5-Coins. Ray threw the 3-Coins and handed the PLC a much needed 65,000 points, which could possibly be the record single hand score for the year.

Hide arrived in time for the third game, and it turned out that the foreigners' fortunes, such as they were, had peaked. Ray never got past zero, and the PLC never got that far, -14 being the best cumulative score of his evening.

Noda won the third and fourth, and called it an evening on a healthy +209, a score which ensured that he had broken through the +1000 point barrier in style.

I'm sure that Ray and the PLC would have been happy to have called it a night at this stage too, but Kayo had arrived and not yet had a game so they stayed and both continued on the downward slope as Hide won the fifth and Kayo the sixth games.

The result was that Ray took the "worst result" from Jaime by racking up a total score of -193. It was a bit harsh really, when you consider that 65 of those points came from one discard!

The Grand Accumulated Results Table is beginning to look rather embarrassing as the top four players are all Japanese and all in the black. All the foreign players are in the red, and the only Japanese player down there with them is the rookie Nobuhiro, and he is moving up the table by default as the foreigners drop below him one by one...

Not only that but Nobuhiro is an improving player who is expected to record a positive finish any time soon...

Noda +116, -3, +59, +37, --, -- = +209
Hide --, --, -10, +13, +38, +11 = +52
Kayo --, --, --, --, -9, +45 = +36
===
David -116, +102, -5, -14, -16, -55 = -104
Ray 0, -99, -44, -36, -13, -1 = 193

David Hurley
Japanese Games Shop

Two Tables In Play Two Weeks Running...

2008-07-27T14:01:00.002+09:00

Now that summer is here and university classes are finished, I spend an hour or so lolling in the hot baths and sauna of a certain salubrious spot in the middle of town before heading over to Kemby's to meet the foreign mahjong contingent and kick off the evening with a few preliminary beers during Happy Hour. Thank goodness Kemby's have dispensed with complicated free-beer-ticket system and simply charge half price for all the beers you drink. Much easier.

Friday 18th July - Foreigners Fall At Kodama
Two Fridays ago we had every single player on the Grand Accumulated Results Table 2008 in attendance, which meant that we were able to have two tables in play for the first time in a while.

It looked as if Nobu would achieve a breakthrough and come out on top for the evening, but then Noda woke up in time to punish him in Nobu's last game of the evening...

Hide --, --, +49, +38,+52, -6, -17 = +116
Noda +24, -4, -1, +2, -43, +102, -10 = +80
===

David -21, -37, +38 --, --, --, -- = --19
Ray +18, +57, -4, -41, -44, --, -15 = -29
Kiyo --, -19, +4, --, --, --, -14 = -29
Nobu --, +20, +30, -32, +47, -89, -- = -34
Jaime -5, -16, -29, -22, +2, +4, +24 = -42
Kenyon +3, -1, -39, -8,* +6, --, -4 = -43

* Er, was this a yakitori or a chombo?

Friday 25th July - The English Fall Further At Jan Topia
Then last Friday, even though Noda was not with us, we still ended up with seven players, including a first time appearance of Satoru-san for about three years. Satoru was one of the ORIGINAL players when The Poor Little Cypriot first washed up on Japanese shores back in 1990...

Nowadays, whenever Satoru appears on the scene we go through a routine in which he protests that he hasn't played for so long that he's virtually forgotten how to play at all - and then proceeds (after a suitably shaky start) to rack up the points. That is exactly what happened on Friday.

Half way through an evening in which David went out on one of his rare Kokushimusou hands (courtesy of a 1-Coin discard from Ray), Satoru, as Oya in the third hand of his Oya-ship, claimed the 7-Coins off David to reveal a hidden Chinitsu hand for a score of 50,000 points!

Satoru --, -32, +98, +43 = +109
Kenyon +72, +7, -6, +8, -6, -21, +59, -34 = +79
Ray -24, -19, -4, +51, +3, +40 = +47
Kiyo +63, +19, +3, -29, +2 = +58
===

Hide --, +50, -15, -4, +17, -24, -43,** -12 = -31
David +12,* -25, -77, -47, -11, +45, -16, +46 = -73
Jaime -60, -44, -15, -54, +26, -42 = -189