Tuesday, December 27, 2011

My Brief Story

I originally got into Japanese culture through movies. Before I was even in lower school, my grandmother used to show old Miyazaki movies like My Neighbor Totoro and Castle in the Sky. Now I am a huge fan of all the Ghibli movies and they rally bring back a great nostalgic feeling. Throughout middle school and high school I became more and more interested in Japanese culture. I came to really adore everything about Japan from cuisine to media to video games. I found out about shogi from some website that I was exploring and I thought it was very interesting. I have always liked logic puzzles and I enjoyed strategy games like chess so I was thrilled that there was a Japanese chess and I was motivated to learn about it. So as anyone in my generation would do to learn about something, I Googled it which led me to the all-knowing entity, Wikipedia. After reading the whole page I sought out another internet powerhouse to learn more about shogi, YouTube! I found HIDETCHI's channel, anyone wanting to learn how to play shogi I'd recommend checking out his channel. So anyway that's pretty much how I learned about Shogi, one of HIDETCHI's videos shows how shogi boards are made. I was inspired not only to make my own shogi board, but that's when I decided that collecting shogi boards and pieces would be a bit of a life long hobby of mine.

1 comment:

  1. I love Shogi :), and I also love to hear how you got into Japanese culture. I got into Japanese culture with Godzilla movies(I know not the best movies in the world, but they were fun). Then Naruto came out on Cartoon network. I couldn't wait to get home for school, praying to god I wasn't late for the episode. It got me into the world of anime. Well I first heard about Shogi when Shogi was considered for promotion to Chunin, a ninja said that he was the great at Shogi (I can't remember the exact words). Well Same as you, I Googled, and learned from a hamster... http://hozo.vs.land.to/shogi.html ... I also love chess. In fact I was looking for a Shogi board just now, that's how I found your blog. I'm like playing on ds, hamster, and Downloadable shogi, but I want to play against real people...
    Well, luck to you on your quest for a homemade Shogi board... bye

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