BINGO!

So, in America, when someone mentions Bingo, a couple of things come to mind (for me at least. One, Japanese-American (JA) Bingo around Christmas every year because my family always goes to it. It's fun. There's mass bingo. We get those cards that have the sliding windows. Two, following that, Bingo at like, every JA obon festival in California. I swear to god. At some point in time, they all have a bingo tournament. Three, old people who play bingo. I've always thought of it as a JA game and an old person's game.

Needless to say, I was very surprised when I found it here in Japan, and even more surprised when I found out that it was super popular. I don't quite understand the entire fascination with it, to be honest. I was never much of a bingo fan. I've always hated having to stand up and say bingo. I mean, the prize is nice and all, but I hate drawing attention to myself like that.

In Japan, Bingo is played a little differently. The BINGO is only the name - you don't actually use it for calling out the numbers, which I thought was really strange at first. The number pickers are super high tech too lol. No wooden balls here... the one we had tonight played music and everything. It even had its own mic.

Oh, let me rewind a little bit. Tonight was my bonenkai - year end party - for my Niimi schools. The main event was bingo. Main event. Whaaaaaaaaat? Also, the first week i was in japan, I saw a huge crowd turn out for bingo.... at the grocery store/Polka. That was like, what, seriously?!

Another big difference is the significance Japanese people give to "ricchi" or basically, when you only need one more to win. They get so excited for that! I mean, we do too, but they'll announce it to everyone even more so than when we did it. Or than I remember it at least.

But yeah. The cards most places use are like the ones above - you just punch the holes out of the numbers. Very good Japanese counting practice.


Picture from flickr.