The thought manifests as the word; The word manifests as the deed; The deed develops into habit; And habit hardens into character. So watch the thought and its ways with care, And let it spring from love Born out of concern for all beings.
-- The Buddha
Mahjong
We just got back from our weekly MahJong session. We play with Phil, our Englishman friend, and a Japanese couple. We play Japanese rules which is seeing how high a score you can get and a lot of devious strategy. The Japanese man, Wada is the epitome of the inscrutable Japanese. When he draws his tiles he doesn't arrange them but fixes all the possibilities in his mind. I have been watching him closely and practicing/learning how he thinks. For me that takes a semi interesting game and adds a lot of flavor to it. Though Wada never lets on in words some of the thinking involved, I have picked up some interesting pointers. When playing with other Japanese pros, you never arrange your tiles. That gives the other players hints as to what you have. If you turn the tile upside down it's a character, wind or dragon, as example. Arranging in groups then putting a tile in the middle is a run. The Japanese are geniuses when it comes to noticing little subtleties.