Mahjong Travel Journal: Fukuoka
I am just getting back from a short weekend in Fukuoka. I was going back to my roots. Fukuoka International Airport is the first place I ever landed in Japan and that was over 10 years ago. The last time I walked the streets of Tenjin was 8 years ago and now I was going back for my job. What a great thing.
I wish I had more time to reminesce. I wanted to eat the ramen at the famous Kyushu food stands and call up my host mom from all those years ago. Instead, I played Mahjong and it was good.
Kaori Shimizu and I met Saturday morning at Haneda airport. Our flight didn’t leave until 11 and we had to play for 7 hours at the Tenjin Blue Dragon branch, so it was going to be a tight schedule. It didn’t help that the JAL (ugh. ANA is so much better) flight arrived late and there was traffic on the road. We dropped our bags at the hotel and rushed off to the parlor.
Blue Dragon has a few special rules. They do not recognize the 3 Quads hand. But, the most interesting rule they have is the White Dragon Win.
One of the white dragons has a dragon face and the words “Blue Dragon” printed on it. After reaching, if you draw this tile at any time you can win on it. It’s also good for 2 extra chips. As you can imagine some people forget for a split second that it’s wild and accidentally discard it. It happens often enough that they do not implement the Missed Win rule for this special tile (unless you’re actually waiting for the white dragon). The hardest part about this rule for me is remembering to pon when the special tile is discarded and I have 2 more whites.
Lucky for me these rules suit me better than the Sakae rules (lost a lot there… the red 5-dots should NOT be a valid minimum hand-point!) and I had enough in my pocket at the end of the day to splurge on a foot massage at the hotel! But before that Kaori and I had dinner with a Buddhist priest from Oita, who also works at the parlors part-time.
Sunday morning was of course the ReachMahjong.com meet-up and I had my trusty laptop as usual. Since my puppy Luna ate my 2-prong charger and most hotels don’t work with the US 3-prong plugs, my plan was to head to McDonalds at 6:50 and get all charged up.
Only Kyushu McD’s aren’t the same as Tokyo… I would be getting no power there.
I booked it back to the hotel and made the chatroom by 7:10. I had only 35 minutes of juice left and spent it all on Osamu and Bunta, going over the final table from last week’s tournament. Sorry I disappeared guys!!!
After this there was time for a nap before the 11:00 checkout and I milked every minute of it. We were scheduled at the parlor at 11:30 but the big boss, the owner, had other plans.
I met him and Kaori in a conveyor-belt sushi restaurant and what was waiting on the counter for me but a tall, frosty brew. The traditional Japanese breakfast: beer, raw fish and soy sauce. I was in heaven. It seemed to work for my game too because I did even better Sunday than I did the day before.
The flight back was uneventful. We had ramen at the airport and I slept on the plane while Kaori played DragonQuest on her DS. Apparentely she picked up a ton of new people on her quest thanks to this trip. Whatever that means.
So in conclusion, I saw zero of Kyushu. I hope I can get back for fun and not for work, but I can’t really complain about travelling around to play mahjong. I love it and I can’t wait for the next trip.
