how did you learn about mahjong?

[eyarukun]

1-dot white-dra 1-dot well i first saw richi mahjong on the cartoon anime saki. at first i didnt think it was a real game. but then i looked on youtube and walah!! i couldnt beleave it!! i searched and searched for places to play, oand my goal is to find a free rank based server. although. yahoo japan worked good. concidering i am not from japan i cannot have an id on there, ( if anyone knows how or has advice in that area please let me know.) but anyway, ive been playing mahjong for about a week, but have been admiring the game for a few months. so please, let me know how you guys learned about it, and how long you been playing. and hopefully we will get the chance to play one another!
1-dot white-dra 1-dot

[carl]

an episode of seinfeld, but it was old women playing american style.:P

[Gamegrunt]

Mhing was my gateway drug.

Gg

[b4k4ni04]

Saki .... I must sadly admit. <3 for all the characters who have solid play (Kajiki, Fukuji, Nodoka, Hisa (when she doesnt go on a hell wait tear)). and a rofl at all the gimmick freaks >P.

tenhou.net is a great free place to play.

I\'ve been on tenhou since September. Acquired a JPN tile set around that time too and occasionally find some friends to beat up o- I MEAN play with ^^;.
~b4k4.

[Spdwagon]

Some bozos were fishing for fresh meat with this image on a certain wapanese imageboard 2 years ago, along with a link to one of tenhou private lobbies(see pic) and a link to Arcturus\'s english guide for tenhou.net.

Spoiler tag because vulgar language.

Spoiler: show

I\'ve been playing it since then.

[Poochy]

Well, I first learned about Mahjong at a family gathering where 4 of my aunts and uncles started up a game, of the Taiwanese variant. I ended up watching, and they explained the rules to me. After which I promptly lost interest a couple weeks later because A: when my cousins left, I didn\'t have 3 other people to play with who didn\'t want to gamble, and B: the Taiwanese variant is annoyingly luck-based. (Tsumo wins are worth slightly more than triple the value of the same hand won by ron. Which means you pay more if someone else wins by tsumo than you would if you had just dealt into their hand.)

Years later, I found out about Riichi when I impulse-bought a copy of Yakuman DS while on vacation in Japan. After which I lost interest again because the Yakuman DS AI, being designed by the same programmers as Mario Kart, cheat blatantly. (Double Reach every other hanchan makes it rather obvious, not to mention the suspiciously high frequency of CPU Tenhou/Chiihou/Renhou wins.)

And then on another trip to Japan, I went to an arcade in Akiba to play DDR and Beatmania IIDX until my hands and feet went numb, where I came across a row of Mahjong Fight Club 6 machines, which was what finally got me hooked.

[zzo38]

From a book in the library. I had previously read different books about rules of mahjong in the library, but one day I found one describing the Japanese rules and I happened to like that one best

[Ruro]

For me it was the anime Akagi where i first saw riichi an i thought wow what a great gambling game. It took me some time to learn the rules, but i must say it was a good decision to learn this great game :) Looking back now on akagi, the play there is a little silly but i still like it although it never helped to improve my game :D

[kylone]

I first heard of mahjong from Legend of the Drunken Master, but it was only mentioned. As for actually learning about the game, the anime Saki. The anime is blantantly ridiculous in playing--heck the author pulls out just about every edge case in the game (well, except double yakuman) during the (regional) tournament arc. (I have since decided that several of the characters have precognative powers related to the game, related to their play styles.) I was fascinated by such a complex game.
I learnt the basic rules from MagjongTime, and went from there.

[b4k4ni04]

I feel compelled to admit that I had seen Mahjong in NANA and xxxHolic before Saki convinced me to pick up the game. And I still think finding a set like Yasu\'s would be awesome. A nice travel set in a nice wood case would be epic~~.

[mostek]

i came to japan and got a roomate, who playied mahjong almost every night with his friends.
its incredibly hard to sleep to the sound of tiles being washed every few minutes, so I started staying up and watching them play..

[Ignatius]

I learned about it because I´ve watch Nana, XXX Holic and I´ve played Yakuza 2 (Ryu ga Gotoku 2). When I looked on the web to learn how to play, I found Akagi. Then when I had understood the basics, I found Saki and Legendary gambler Tetsuya.

[mostek]

I learned about it because I´ve watch Nana, XXX Holic and I´ve played Yakuza 2 (Ryu ga Gotoku 2). When I looked on the web to learn how to play, I found Akagi. Then when I had understood the basics, I found Saki and Legendary gambler Tetsuya.

I love tetsuya. I learned about tsubame gaeshi from tetsuya. I basically learned how to cheat reading tetsuya..
..although some (i guess most) of the ikasama the characters use in that series, especially towards the end would probably be impossible in real life

[SaWfan1]

I became friends with some people from Thailand and they know people from practically every part of the world. We have a Christmas get together with them and one year one of the families brought a mahjong set and that was my first experience. I recently became re-interested in it when a friend of mine was telling me about playing with a set that her grandmother had recieved from a friend. I played a few games and it immediately became one of my top interests lol.

[Referee]

One of the CD that came with one of my computer's (now long defunct) CD-ROM unit had several games, and one of them was a Mahjong game (Hong Kong style, which is basically call out with any regular hand). That's my first memory I can recall of "Mahjong is not a solitaire thing with weird pictures".

Then I started investigating and discovering a rich world, and now I plan to learn riichi to some extent. (ie, strategy / tactic -wise), ruleswise I seem to be pretty OK. Though I still need some practice counting points fast, hehe.