Mahjong Travel Journal: Taiwan
Hey all. I was a little worried people might start thinking all I ever think about is Mahjong so I thought I’d write about a recent trip I made to Taiwan. It was a lot of fun. Checked some sights, met some cool people, oh! And um, well, played a little Mahjong.
This weekend in Taipei, they held the first of a series of qualifiers for the World Series of Mahjong, to be held this year at the Venetian in Macau, August 19-22. Jenn and I trekked down from Tokyo a day early to take in some of the sights and meet up with the WSOM peeps to talk a little business.We’ll be holding the Reach event again at the beginning of the series so Japanese style Mahjong players can strut their stuff on their home turf, so to say. By the way, the first qualifier for that event will be this weekend. Check that out here (link)
After taking care of business with WSOM, Jenn and I visited 101, the old tallest building in the world, and checked out extremely appropriately named things inside it like the “super big damper”. It dampens motion of the building from earthquakes and high winds, and as you might have already guessed, it’s not just a little big. Massage was also the order of the day, traditional Thai massage on Friday and Shanghai style foot massage on Saturday. Jenn has some pretty dope friends down in Taipei who took us out to some of the happening night scenes, notably Barcode, around the corner from 101.
The tournament was a good time of course, even if we didn’t make it into the top 10 for a spot in the World Series. First of all, we were a little unprepared as we had mistakenly assumed they would be using the World Series rules when in fact they went with the local Taiwanese style. That means even MORE stealing of tiles than we originally imagined as they allow the “chicken hand” there, a hand without any hand points, Fantastically enough, Jenn and I managed to both draw the 6 of dots when determining which tables to sit at for the first game. Actually, I think that helped me tremendously as I needed all the help I could get with rules explanation.
Of course, I like Japanese tournaments too, but if there’s one area they’re a little behind the times on, it’s refreshments. After losing the first game in straight down to -48 points fashion, it was nice to get a little liquid encouragement for my second game.
Congratulations to the winners who will be representing Taiwan in Macau this summer. Hope to see some of you at this weekend’s qualifier and the rest of you at the big event in Macau!
