The Week in Review - 3/19/10

I finished my shogi game this week and won even though I did a careless move near the end. We played about 15-20 minutes during lunch each of the days. The last day we spent a little more to allow for talking about the game and how things could of been played better. I think the biggest problem for my opponent was deployment. He moved the rook and bishop around a bit without gaining anything while I was able to move many of my pieces to control more of the board and limit his movement. He wants to have a rematch some day since I now have a winning record against him of 2 games to 1. I look forward to it.
I finally got my alien registration card for Japan just in time for my return trip to New York. Maybe I won't need to get fingerprinted the next time out here. I bought a nice Xiangqi board that hopefully will fit in my luggage. I figured I already have a nice shogi board and chess board so might as well finish out the set.

Week in Review - 3/12/10

It was slightly colder than normal in Tokyo this week with New York having some warmer days. Tuesday evening there was actually a snow flurry that covered the sidewalks with slush making for some slippery walking. By midnight the snow had all turned to rain though and by morning there wasn't a trace of the snow.

I've started to play shogi again with a coworker and the board positions from after the 2 sessions of play are below. It's not too hard to figure out how to play if you can remember the kanji. I learned overnight from wikipedia. The most exciting factor is being able to place pieces that you capture anywhere on the board for your side. I'm the player on the bottom and have a decent position at this point with a pawn (歩) in hand.



Lastly, I saw quite the site this morning. One of the little lunch trucks drove by and to my utter amazement there was a brick pizza oven in the back of that thing. No idea how they managed to fit it in there or how much it weighs, but that's definitely fresh pizza on the go.