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

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 ...

20130601 Keiki Hula Ho'ike

20130601 Keiki Hula Ho'ike , a set on Flickr. After a few rehearsals and meetings in the mornings and evenings, the day of Hula show arrived. She had to go to elementary school in the morning though it's Sat, she left school early so that she could make it just enough to join the photo shooting. She was co-operative, and totally motivated and excited about the show. Her hair, outfit, dresses already left at the stage, got on a taxi, then we got to the venue. They started circle time already, getting ready for lining up for the photo. Then drama happened. I left her with the other girls and went look for her costume at back stage. They were moving around the stuff and I could not find it, had to search each room, then finally her stuff arrived. So I passed it to one of the teachers so that she could put it on to Ton. I went back to the stage, then found Ton crying so hard, came over to me. She insisted on staying with me, not dancing. Uh-oh. So, everybody, other...

Today's flowers 今日のお花

Rose, spray rose, eryngium, tulip, garbera, and bupleurum. バラ(デザート)、スプレーバラ(ラベンダーシャワー)、エリンジウム(シリウス)、 チューリップ(ドランケンシュタイン)、紫陽花(ミニグリーン)、ガーベラ(シルバースノー)、ブプレリウム(グリフティ)