But one of the things I am a little festive about is I am just about to upgrade my mahjong feed on bluesky to a new server! (if you read this in 2026, it's already done). I really spend most of my time on this site, and on this community when it comes to being online. I want to write about it, to try and entice you to come take a look. Here's a link to the main feed.

I'd like to take some time to recommend the mahjong community on the social network bluesky. I built a very simple algorithm that just shows you almost every ENG/JPN/KOR/CHN post that contains mahjong related content on the website. It's like having a bunch of SNS friends that ONLY post mahjong content.

Winning Chips is the Objective of ZAN

Speaking of MK (you know that I am always gonna try and find a way to start with a fighting game segue), I've been thinking about some of my younger days as an avid participant in the fighting game community. One of my first jobs while attending college was working in a Namco owned local arcade called Time Out. One of my best memories from that time was getting that fresh, new Tekken 5 arcade cabinet in, complete with the controller ports, and the data cards, and grabbing this sick shirt that I wore until it fell apart. 

I haven't written about mahjong in a while. I've mostly been trying to build the bluesky mahjong community with the feed I maintain to see all the mahjong posts on the website (check this link for info on that). I really enjoy spending my time online there! There are plenty of vtubers advertising their streams, posting their yakuman, grumbling about bad luck, asking nanikiru problems, dreaming over akagi and washizu's complex relationship, you know, the stuff you'd expect to do in a mahjong social media community! I am still on Twitter, though given the nature of that site, definitely less and less.
I came across a tweet from FuguTabetai, a street fighter community member in japan who tweets about that scene in english. 

ソーシャルネットワーク「bluesky」を使用している場合、このリンクは麻雀関連の名前や用語を検索するフィードにつながり、アプリ上の麻雀関連の投稿のほとんどを見ることができます。Pastebinのリンクは、検索する特定の用語のリストにつながります。英語の麻雀記事も見たい場合はフィードもあります！もし十分な関心があれば、日本語を母国語とする人が、より具体的な用語に焦点を当てた、日本語を母国語とするコミュニティのためのより良いものを作ってくれることを期待している。

The Benefits of Watching Mahjong

I'm sure that if you're reading this, you probably have a twitter account. That's where I am 90% of the time. It's my favorite social media site! I've been able to connect with so many people in such different ways, sometimes loyally just watching someone's life story, and sometimes being an active participant. I love to just shitpost and joke, I often post a lot of stream of consciousness through my twitter. It's a holiday here in America, the 4th of July. I've taken an extra day off at work even! So after doing some errands, I was ready to start enjoying what twitter had to offer. I was presented with this:

Recently I've been watching the M Tournament and the Saikouisen A1 league. I've become more familiar with Pros and Pro Organizations from around Japan. I've also become more aware at the need to improve my own game. Short term goals on that front is to perhaps make Master in Mahjong Soul, Try to ascend in the Marujan Pro League, and to enter the ARML league in the US to try and climb from the bottom. Lots of venues to play and improve here. 

The Thesis:

When I went to go check if it existed, I couldn't find anything. As a matter of fact, there isn't even a wikipedia article in Japanese for fantasy sports. Now, if I am actually reinventing the wheel here, and this already exists somewhere, I hope everyone will yell at me for being so bad at research but I couldn't really find anything. I have never played fantasy sports before, because I don't really follow sports. It's Memorial Day Weekend and I've got some extra time, so I thought it would be fun to think up some rules to play after researching how other fantasy sports work. But first, an explanation and a caveat.

Well, this week the finals for M League will take place. I feel like the final games between these 4 teams will make for some amazing drama and some great Riichi mahjong. I am supporting Team Raiden, a team that has probably one of the most amazing underdog stories in the league right now. One additional thing I'm looking forward to with the finals is what kind of hot commentary will be coming from one Hiyoshi Tatsuya.

I am just a regular, run of the mill mahjong freak. I learned about the game in 2005 when the Akagi anime released, and from there, I had to learn everything I could about the game. At this time, you basically had Tom Sloper's website (still up! sloperama.com), Jenn and Garthe's riichimahjong dot com website, and books like Jelte Rep's Great Book of Mahjong. Tenhou was the way to play online, and if you wanted a single player experience, you had to buy Mahjong Fight Club for your DS or PSP, as they were region free handhelds.

We woke up at 0630, and while of course I was ready to go in a matter of minutes, my wife, no matter what sort of affair or errand we run, ALWAYS has to make sure she's ready to be perceived by the world, so we left our house at about 0800, hoping to wait in line for about 45 minutes. RSD sort of caught us off guard, as we found that American RSD for 2022 and 2021 didn't really feature a lot of records we wanted to get. This year however, I was ready to chase the SunO))))Boris reissue of Altar, a record i never owned on cd. I was a huge fan of Boris in my 20s and still am today, although trying to keep up with their releases seems like it takes a level of dedication i simply don't have. Someone just needs to reissue "Pink" and I'll be absolutely delighted!
My wife wanted to chase the record of one of her favorite new wave bands, A Flock of Seagulls. This album featured B sides and alternative mixes. Rare Birds indeed! They only pressed 1025 of these.

Mahjong is such an amazing game. It is so completely customizable, can be simple or complex as you'd like, has all sorts of regional and national variants… touching tiles feels good, and it's hobby you can eagerly enjoy to the grave.