Hiroko's Hitokoto

Do you play Shogi/Japanese chess? Nov. 17 is Shogi day, which hails back to the annual Shogi competition held by the Shoguns from Edo era. The origin of Shogi is "Chaturanga" in India around BC200 - BC300. Chaturanga passed to the West as Chess. It also spread East, the you can see many similar games in Asia: Shatranj in Arabia, Makrook in Thailand, Karton in Vietnam, Tjyangi in Korea, Xiangqi in China, etc. The original game "Chaturanga" is a game for 4 people with 8 x 8 grid chess board, and it has 4 different forces, infantry, cavalry, tank, and elephant troops. It reflects the battle scenes around that time where many small nations fought with elephant troops. Likewise, Shogi has its characteristics influenced by the Japanese way of war. You can use the opponents pieces after you capture them. It might reflect that they use to accept captives as their slaves. We use a 9 x 9 grid chess board for Shogi now, but there use to be more variety in size and rules: 12 x ...

I watched a documentary of Seven Eleven Japan on TV the other day. It was very interesting how they grew their business to not only become the top convenience store, but also the top retailer. The story goes like this: 2 employees from Yokado went to the US to purchase the brandname license for Seven Eleven, and over 100 folders of manuals. Since 7-11 US didn't plan to enter the Japanese market at all, they instead suggested a very expensive royalty. Although they staked their fate on this deal, Yokado, their employer, wasn't happy about it at all and became negative about the whole project. So, in the end the company decided to finance only 50% of the capital for the 7-11 Japan project. Those 2 employees left Yokado, dumped their savings into the new business, took out mortgages on their houses, and approached the banks to loan money. For two years, they worked more than 16 hours a day. They started the business with the whole world against them. The concept of "convenien...