Jenn’s Corner #34: The Quest
Suddenly being a professional mahjong player in Japan has a new requirement. You also have to be a professional or at least an aspiring Dragon Quest player. That’s right, Dragon Quest IX has been out in Japan for the past few months and that is what all mahjong players are doing between tournaments. Believe it or not these types of games are much more common to find in a professional mahjong player’s DS than, say, a game based on mahjong.
My good friend Kaori Shimizu practically has an adapter for the Nintendo DS installed in the palm of her hand, so I knew that she was playing at an early stage, but the idea of this really hit home when I went to the North Kanto league in August. In the morning we play the pro league and in the evening we have the amateur league. There is always about a 30 minute break in between the leagues and this time, every single pro (except Yukio Yoshida and myself) were playing Dragon Quest on their DS. Not only that, they were adventuring together in the game.
I went outside to take a nap.
Then last month on my regular trip to Costco, I joined the club. I bought Dragon Quest IX and my DS has not been shut off since. Even though I jumped on the bandwagon quite late in the game, everywhere I go there are at least a few people playing the game, including on the train. The great part about Japan is that everyone rides the train and everyone is always playing the same game. In Dragon Quest, you can pick up other “travelers” and get treasure maps from them using the wi-fi feature on the DS. I have about 100 people at this point. People that ride on the train daily have 10 times that many. RM.com columnist Shintaro Konno, has over 1000 travelers in his database.
True, this column has nothing to do with mahjong, but this is what the Japan Professional Mahjong League members are spending their time doing while not at the table. I would like to write more, but there are more monsters waiting to be beat!
In other news, the 2010 JPML girls’ calendar is on sale and we will be putting it on MahjongMart.com this month. Don’t miss out. There are 16 girls in this edition and all are players that appear on Konami’s Mahjong Fight Club.
