Mahjong Travel Journal: Sado Island
If you’re a regular ReachMahjong.com reader, you’ll know that we have added a new contributor, James Johnston, to write book reviews each month. James resides in Japan, if you can call it that, on Sado Island. While in most of Japan the term “foreigners” means a person like Garthe or I, on Sado this term refers to all mainlanders as well. We ventured to Sado and spent the day letting Jamie drive us around this little island of the shore of Niigata.
We made it to the 8 am ferry and got to the island by 9, where Jamie was waiting for us with his car. Sado is famous for its red-crested crane, the Toki, which were originally gifts from China. We went straight to the Toki sanctuary and through the cold rain, barely saw a few beautiful birds. It was Jamie’s first time to the sanctuary too and it was a fun experience to get to know each other.
After some coffee to warm up, Jamie took us to the only 2 Mahjong Fight Club machines on the entire island. This was a bit of a puzzle since the minimum MFC machine order is 4 machines, but there was no one to ask questions to, so we sat down and played a few games. The pressure was on with Jamie watching me and I proceeded to get 4th, 2nd and 4th in the 3 games I played. Way to go Pro! (note the sarcastic undertones)
Luckily Jamie didn’t judge me too hard and we went to a great sushi lunch. I love sushi and Sado’s fish was exceptional. Unfortunately I’m never able to eat as much as I want to at sushi restaurants and even though I left with a full stomach, there was a lot more I wanted to try.
The next stop on our journey was some live mahjong. Sado has no free mahjong parlors and for all I know, no mahjong parlors. We played in an entertainment center that had karaoke and mahjong all in the same building. There were only 2 tables and the other one was full, so we sat at the other for a few hours and I took back my honor with at least one win in there! Jamie won a game or 2 as well and we all made a couple of new friends. What a great game we play.
The final stop of the evening before the last ferry (yes, it was still 6:30 pm) was yakiniku. I have never eaten so much good food in such a short time-span. We had about 20 minutes to stuff our faces before making the 7:30 ferry and stuff we did. Then it was a rush back off to the ferry and a 7 hour trip back to Tokyo.
Thanks to Jamie we saw a bit of Sado (which may be the same as most of Sado) and had some great meals coupled with some great mahjong. Hopefully he had a good time too. We look forward to seeing Jamie every month on ReachMahjong.com reviewing and translating Mahjong literature for us. You can also catch him on the forums and we’ll see you there.
