Friday 21 September 2012

Mahjong - III - "游の屋"

Mahjong- 144c. "游の屋"

 We have a rather curious case here. Aldough the cards to all appearences the cards look chinese, the name of the maker contains  "の"- a japanese word, meaning "of". However, it is known that in taiwan, this character is sometimes used to replace 的, having an identical meaning, to give the brand a more exotic feel. Hence, if I did not err in the transcription, the maker's name is "house of games"
Another curious feature is the colour scheme. This deck replaces blue with black, and the 2s, 3s and 5s of coins are only printed in either red or green, onitting black/blue entirely

                                                                             Coins.  
bamboos.

萬- wan or 10000s

The winds ( top, with "南"inverted) & dragons ( bottom) Again, black replaces blue

Some flowers. Note the different, more stylized carving

Sunday 16 September 2012

Mahjong II - KR brand

Mahjong deck - "KR brand" - 152c??? ( Incomplete)
The following is yet another mahjong deck. It is more typical of it's breed, being more of an oblong in shape ( 8.5 x 4.5 cm). This deck also better reflects the style of carving on conventional mahjong tiles
 Note the following features;
1- the deck posses No indices in English, whilst the first deck has alphabets and numbers in it's upper left corner. This deck posses no such feature
2- note tthe style of script. The script here is more fluid than the previous deck.
coins

Bamboos. Note the one of bamboos ( 1st row, 1st from left)
It is represented as a bird, as a single bamboo may be altered by cheats

萬,or tends of thousands

The winds and dragons
All the flowers

Monday 3 September 2012

Mahjong part I - anon

"[Mahjong]" - 148c., ( anon)

 The game of mahjong, or mahjongg, as some of my readers may know, is usually played with tiles , somewhat like dominoes. However, mahjong is sometimes issued in playing card form ( such cards are sometimes known as "Kards", to avoid confusion with another piece of equipment used in the american game).
  Such decks, produced, albeit infrequently. Nevertheless, if one looks hard enough, such a deck may be discovered. Such decks come in several sizes, form long, thin oblongs, to ones the size of poker cards, as shown here.
 Note the followng features;
1- The deck is comprised of 3 main "suits",  coins , bamboos,  and "萬" , or tens of thousands. The cards in each suit rank form 1-9. Additionally, there is an assortment of extra cards, descriptios of which will be given below.
2- In each of the corners of the cards, we see a depiction of the subject of the card in miniature. These are the indexes of the cards.
 In addition to the above, the deck is usnsual, as it is firstly printed in plastic ( most such decks use paper) , and secondly, it's back bears an ad for Tiger beer.

the suit of coins


the suit of bamboos

the suit of  萬, or tens of thousands

Top row; ( L-R),east, south, west north. These cards are typically called the "winds"
bottom row ( R-L ) "中 ,白板 , 發"  lit. "red center, white board, green prosperity"
the aforementioned cards are often known as the "dragons" in English

Bonus cards: Top row- the "Flowers"- in this deck, there are 2 sets of 4 flowers each. half of each of the sets are shown.
Bottom row- "Animals"- Bonuses perculiar to S'porean / Malay mahjong