That Game With The Three Objects
Jan. 21st, 2010 06:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tabular_rasaSo, there's this game that's popular around the world. You've probably played it. You make a fist to represent a rock and a V with two fingers to represent scissors, and hold your hand straight and flat to represent paper. Two people battle by making one of the three gestures in unison with each other; rock beats scissors ("rock breaks scissors"), scissors beats paper ("scissors cuts paper"), and paper beats rock ("paper covers rock"). Sounds familiar, no?
So I'm curious to know what you called it, and how you played it.
[Poll #1514465]
In Japan they call it "Janken," short for "Jan-ken-pon," what you chant when you play. You start off by saying "Saisho wa gu" ("First is the rock") and making a fist, and then say "Jan ken PON" and on "pon" making the gesture of your choice. If there's a tie, you immediately chant "Aiko deshou" and throw the next gesture on the final syllable of "deshou." You can play it with more than two people, which BLEW MY MIND when I first saw it. It's not as cool as it sounds, though; all you do is keep doing rounds until no one throws one of the gestures (it takes a while if you have a lot of people), and then all the people with the weaker gesture are eliminated, and you continue to throw for rounds of only two objects and weed people out until there's finally one winner.
The gameplay is consistent across the board in Japan. They always do it the same way. Yet in the US, there is no consistency at all. We can't even agree on what to call it, and I don't know about you but somebody always tries to throw it on the last word while somebody else wants to say "Shoot!" and you have to stop, agree on the rules, and start over again.
Why did this come up? At Ooshima today, the students were learning to play this game in English. They were learning it from an interactive video recording (reminded me a lot of SmartBoard application, only without the SmartBoard-- the teacher had to press the buttons on his computer), but I was also there to throw a wrench in things. The recording represented the American game as "Rock, Scissors, Paper," and the chant went "Rock, Scissors, Paper, 1, 2, 3!" and then threw the gesture after "3." This confused the heck out of me (especially when he asked me to chant the game in unison with the recording before hearing the recording first) because I called it "Paper, Scissors, Rock" and if I ever said anything after it, it was "Shoot!" or nothing at all. So then I had fun explaining to him that no, I'm not an uncultured buffoon who doesn't even know how to play English Janken, but that there isn't consistency across the board as far as how it should be played. (I know people who say "Shoot!" and people who don't, and I've had arguments with people about whether it's "Rock, Paper, Scissors" or "Paper Scissors Rock." I'm waiting to see the results of the poll, but I think it's possible that in spite of our inconsistencies nobody plays this game the way it was represented in the recording!
So I'm curious to know what you called it, and how you played it.
[Poll #1514465]
In Japan they call it "Janken," short for "Jan-ken-pon," what you chant when you play. You start off by saying "Saisho wa gu" ("First is the rock") and making a fist, and then say "Jan ken PON" and on "pon" making the gesture of your choice. If there's a tie, you immediately chant "Aiko deshou" and throw the next gesture on the final syllable of "deshou." You can play it with more than two people, which BLEW MY MIND when I first saw it. It's not as cool as it sounds, though; all you do is keep doing rounds until no one throws one of the gestures (it takes a while if you have a lot of people), and then all the people with the weaker gesture are eliminated, and you continue to throw for rounds of only two objects and weed people out until there's finally one winner.
The gameplay is consistent across the board in Japan. They always do it the same way. Yet in the US, there is no consistency at all. We can't even agree on what to call it, and I don't know about you but somebody always tries to throw it on the last word while somebody else wants to say "Shoot!" and you have to stop, agree on the rules, and start over again.
Why did this come up? At Ooshima today, the students were learning to play this game in English. They were learning it from an interactive video recording (reminded me a lot of SmartBoard application, only without the SmartBoard-- the teacher had to press the buttons on his computer), but I was also there to throw a wrench in things. The recording represented the American game as "Rock, Scissors, Paper," and the chant went "Rock, Scissors, Paper, 1, 2, 3!" and then threw the gesture after "3." This confused the heck out of me (especially when he asked me to chant the game in unison with the recording before hearing the recording first) because I called it "Paper, Scissors, Rock" and if I ever said anything after it, it was "Shoot!" or nothing at all. So then I had fun explaining to him that no, I'm not an uncultured buffoon who doesn't even know how to play English Janken, but that there isn't consistency across the board as far as how it should be played. (I know people who say "Shoot!" and people who don't, and I've had arguments with people about whether it's "Rock, Paper, Scissors" or "Paper Scissors Rock." I'm waiting to see the results of the poll, but I think it's possible that in spite of our inconsistencies nobody plays this game the way it was represented in the recording!
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Date: 2010-01-23 02:45 am (UTC)