Skip to main content

Shogi

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 12, 15 x 15, 17 x 17, 19 x 19, and 25 x 25!
As chess is a game of strategy, I guess that being in LINC for some of our staff is like playing 4 to 5 games of chess at the same time....

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Cherry blossom sighting at Aoyama Cemetery

Walking around Aoyama Cemetery. It's surreal that cherry blossoms are falling and covering graveyards, and its beauty, ephemeral,  tranquility, everything I don't have enough words to express. And there were white dandelions on the ground. It's very unusual in east Japan. It made me happy to see a couple of flower petals on the loaf of bread I bought before the walk.   青山墓地で花見。 散りゆく桜の花びらが古いお墓に降り積もるのはなんともシュール で、美しさ、儚さと、静かさと、何とも言えず、非日常的。 そんな中、足元には白いタンポポ。東日本では珍しい。 家に帰って見たら、 お散歩前に買ったパンに花びらが付いていたのが何だか嬉しい。 Ships at a graveyard Old Christianity graveyard 白いタンポポ White dandelion Cherry blossom tunnel Cherry blossom petals on a graveyard Flower petals on a loaf of bread Videos of cherry blossom falling , cherry blossom falling like snow , and the last one .

new hat & carrot salad

New blue hat and awesome carrot salad from Daylesford for lunch at Farmers' market at UN University in Omote Sando. And do you see resemblance of his face/angle in the below photo of Ton with hair sticking out with static...? new hat & carrot salad Originally uploaded by piroko_kuroda

Bus rider back home

Overheard a conversation between two senior ladies on the bus way back to home from work. One lady said she was worried about her daughter not getting married. "I was worried about her going out when she was young, and was careful not to let her go on date with some boys, but now I regret what I did. If she had more chances of meeting, she would've been married by now." The other lady was telling her that she was embarrassed by her daughter married to a man not from the good family. "Children of my brothers and cousins all married to the people from the good family. My daughter is the only one not married to such a good family. Even my husband's end relatives also married to decent family. I'm so embarrassed." The grass is greener on the other side of the fence. One is not happy about her daughter being single. One is not happy that her daughter doesn't belong to decent family that she can claim to her relatives. Probably both of them were trying to ...