Takodori's Entrance to Shogi World

Handmade Pokémon Shogi

I found a Japanese blog about a handmade Pokémon Shogi for his children with a good picture. It's Pokémon version of Let's catch the Lion(Dobutsu Shogi).  Here is the link.

Pokémon Shogi

The blogger wrote the set was made of caps of plastic bottles and printing-out of the characters. His seven and three years old children are very happy to play it.

Shogi Wiki started

Shogi Wiki just started. Here are the related announcements.

The 81-Square Universe • View topic - Shogi Wiki

Hi everyone.

Thanks to Hidetchi's Twitter, I was reminded about this fantastic igo wiki, Sensei's Library. Every time I look at SL, I think about how nice it would be to have a wiki like it for shogi, that way it would be so much easier to keep all sorts of shogi information in one place. And then I remembered why The 81-Square Universe exists - because 105 and I wanted something that didn't exist yet.

So applying this to the concept of a shogi wiki, I decided to go ahead and start one:

Shogi Wiki

Shogi Wiki - SHOGI-L | Google Groups

There are several articles are available to read already. Here are the links to some of them. You can edit them to contribute something  in need since they are wiki based articles.

Shogi Wiki - Shogi Wiki

Tsumeshogi - Shogi Wiki

Yagura Castle - Shogi Wiki

Hidetchi's Shogi Videos - Shogi Wiki

"Strip Shogi" between Shikamaru and Temari

I found the following image today.  It had been uploaded since October 6, 2008. Viewed more than 30,000 times and has over 460 comments already. Wow. Click the image then you can go to the creator's original page with lots of comments to read.

Strip Shogi by *RamaChan on deviantART

An article that a chess club learning shogi

Today I found a chess club is forcusing on learning Shogi in US.

Pleasant Hill Elementary chess club making all the right moves » The Commercial Appeal

Right now, the club is focusing on learning Shogi, also known as Japanese chess, to help the students improve their skills and further their enthusiasm.

At Stewart's invitation, members of the New York Shogi Club visited Memphis in September to teach the club more about Shogi and encourage the game's popularity in the region. The visitors played both exhibition games among themselves and played students three at a time.

If you are interested in the full story, please click the link above.

A Letter from Dr. Gralla

Here is the scanned-shot of the article in a local German newspaper reported that Consul Tanaka took part in the 18th German Shogi Open Championship. It has been sent by Dr. Gralla, one of my German friends.

Along with this screen-shot, Dr. Gralla informed me as followings;

the 18th German Shogi Open at Paderborn on October 17th / October 18th, 2009 has been a milestone in the history of German Shogi since it has been the first time that the German Open has officially been opened by a representative of the Government of Japan.

Consul Kenichiro Tanaka from Japan's General Consulate of Dusseldorf, the inofficial "Capital of Japan's Expatriates in Germany", has opened the 18th German Open at Paderborn. And Consul Tanaka has competed in the first round of the German Open as weell - and he won easily, in amazing 15 minutes! The result of Consul Tanaka's training during his youth: He has attended a school of Shogi in Japan.

The local press has covered the event too, the "Westfalen-Blatt" has published a long feature about the event. In the annex I email the scan of that article to you.

Thanks a lot, Dr. Gralla. It's good to know that Consul Tanaka attended the tournament.

For those who are interested in the result of the championship, please refer to here.(in German) and click 18. Offenen Deutsche Meisterschaft.

< addition >

Dr. Gralla sent me an another article about the tournament as below;

A new shogi vatriant without Kanji pieces - Let's Catch the Lion(Dobutsu Shogi, Animal Shogi)

Dobutsu Shogi is a new shogi variant. The rules has been invented by Kitao Madoka(Joryu Shodan) and the design has been done by Fujita Maiko(Joryu 1 kyu). It's started to be sold in Japan since last year and the mass production version has started to be sold since this September. Briefly, it a simple version of Shogi. Both sides have four seperate pieces and captured pieces can be reused like shogi. The board has 3x4 squares. It's easy to remember the rules but I hear there are possible 200 million positions.

It will be demonstrate for the first time to the foreign markets at the opportunity of Essen Spiele. But I was told there is alreday a video review about it in English. Here is the link of it.

YouTube: Let's Catch the Lion Review

And here is the link to the review thread of "Let's Catch the Lion" on boardgamegeek.

[Video Review] Let's Catch the Lion! | Let's Catch the Lion! | BoardGameGeek

It seems it'll be available to buy it online at FunagainGames.

Funagain Games: Let's Catch the Lion! (Shogi for kids)

I hope this will be an entry game for childrens so that they will get interested in Shogi with growing up. And it's fun for adults as well.

Subtitles Project for "How to play Shogi"

HIDETCHI-san posted how to proceed the Subtitles Project for "How to play Shogi".

<<< Subtitles Project for "How to play Shogi" >>>

In order to promote shogi more to the world, I'm working on making subtitles for my "How to play Shogi" series, as to which, I would like to ask you for your cooperation. If you can translate my English subtitles into any other language, please help me by doing that. :-)

Here's how it works:

1. Check the table here to see which subtitles are not available yet....

There are several volunteers who have raised their hands for the translation into Polish, Chinese, Spanish, Italian and Poruguese, but I think more people will be preferable to take part. I wish I could join but the linguistic requirement is beyond my ability. If you are of ability and interested, please click the link above to read the project in details.

Chirdren's opportunity of experiencing shogi in Vietnam

I found the following article today.

Japan’s mid-autumn culture on show

Games and competitions will take place on Saturday and Sunday, including stilt walking, spinning tops, tug-of-war, shogi (Japanese chess), taketombo (bamboo helicopter) and otedama (beanbags).

To prepare for the event, 200 Japanese and Vietnamese volunteers have joined in a training programme, giving them background on and experiencing playing all the games.

I hope many children will get to know shogi through the event.

Chess GM Alexandra Kosteniuk said "I'd love to learn Shogi. "

What a remarkable twitter entry!

Twitter / Alexandra Kosteniuk: @Ventrik True! I'd love to ...

I'd love to learn Shogi. The chess GM Joel Lautier plays Shogi and has told me it's quite a good game.

Meijin Habu Yoshiharu seemed to take chess GM Hikaru Nakamura to an eel restaurant for dinner in Japan

This is according to the recent entry of GM Nakamura's blog.

Blog - Japan Recap

Day 2: "Let's Try This Game Instead"

On the second day, my mother and I, along with Mr. Ozaki headed over to go see a shogi festival where the legendary Habu Yoshiharu played a rapid game. It was here, that I had the pleasure of meeting one of Habu and GM Joel Lautier's friends, Jacques Pineau. Although this was nice, it led to me ending up playing several games of shogi in which I got absolutely destroyed...sigh. I guess you can't be good at all games, eh? After this somewhat enjoyable, somewhat traumatic experience, we all went out and had a nice dinner at an eel restaurant as Habu put it.