This article first appeared in the Mar/Apr 2012 issue of World Gaming magazine.
We are now well into the new year and, looking back, I couldn’t have chosen a better way to end 2011.
As a native of the US now living in Asia, I tend to find myself a bit lonely around the winter holidays, so this year I took the opportunity to fly home to Seattle. Since I play mahjong everyday while I’m in Asia, I don’t usually expect to “work” while on home turf, but this trip was different.
A few years ago the Seattle Mahjong Group was founded, and the members have since gathered regularly to play the game we all love. The core of the group likes the Japanese rules, and since that’s my game, I couldn’t wait to get involved with some hometown locals. The group posts on Facebook, so I let them know my schedule and we decided to meet on new year’s eve for a few rounds.
The group usually meets in a gaming corner of a local mall, just a few miles from the community college I attended before shipping off to Tokyo. Ironically, one of the leading members, Hero, originally from Japan, didn’t learn the Japanese rules until he was in school in Washington. I not only got to play my favorite game, but was able to speak Japanese while playing it, thousands of miles from where I learnt the game and make my livelihood from it.
My friend Ryan Morris, also based in Tokyo, is another westerner who treks home for the holidays. I checked in on Ryan, and he was only too keen to join us for the day. Being based in Tokyo means we normally use the internet to chat with the Seattle Mahjong Group players. It was exciting for all of us to be able to play together in person.
Hero and his friends formed two tables, with Ryan joining one, and me the other. Formerly a writer for a prominent mahjong magazine in Tokyo, Ryan is a much better player than me. He offered lots of great advice to his group, leaving me a little jealous of their good fortune.
My scores for the day weren’t bad. The first game I couldn’t get much going, but didn’t lose many points either. We also enjoyed a good chat, causing our game to take twice as long as the other table. Ryan and I switched tables for the second game, and this time I took off, winning the whole thing.
The players in the group bring their own tiles and mats to play on, and they don’t have the luxury of automatic tables. I didn’t know how many sets of tiles they would have, or what quality they would be, so I packed up my set and brought it along too. It seems I have good taste in tiles, as we chose to use my set and one of the players decided to take it home with him!
With us playing in the mall, one of the best parts of the day was the reaction of passers-by. Almost everyone took notice of what we were doing, and clearly some wanted to join in. I wish they would have! I also wish I had copies to offer them of WGM and my book, Reach Mahjong: The Only Way to Play, so they could better understand what we were doing.
I feel so lucky to have turned my favorite pastime into a job, and am able to share my experience with both the readers of WGM and my friends back home. I’ve taken a long journey, far away from Seattle. It is days like these that make me realize what a positive move it has been!
