The first time Jaime and I met Mr Hanada he was in the company of the former’s trouble’n’strife, or rather more correctly, that esteemed lady was in the company of Mr Hanada since he, being her boss, might well be the owner of the company which employs her.
Be that as it may, the plain and simple fact of the matter is that the Lord and Master of that lady’s work space was perfectly pie eyed, quite frankly fried to the tonsils and not in full control of his ambulatory facilities.
So it will be understood that it was through no lack of charity on our own part if we failed to take him entirely at his word when he declared (several times as I recall) that he would like to join us one Friday evening around one the mahjong tables at Kodama jansou.
A week or so later the word went around that Hanada-san really did intend to come along for a game of mahjong on Friday and so Noda, David, Jaime and Nobu were in attendance against his arrival.
I must admit that there was a degree of scepticism as to whether or not he would let his countenance shine forth amongst us, right up until Hanada-san breezed into the parlour without a totter to be discerned in his gait.
Hanada-san was just in time for the second game. After the usual preliminaries in which the conventions of the game were checked out and the new player apologized for his hopeless ineptitude, Hanada-san entered the lists and within about 60 seconds of play had taken Noda for a 12,000 point Ron to the delight of the foreign party!
The jubilation was not to last, however, as Noda turned out to be the only winner of the second game (+51) and after a flat zero in the third, retired for the evening.
It was during this game that David was Oya for less than a minute as Noda declared Double Riichi and went out on Ippatsu Tsumo.
One can only wonder what would’ve happened had Noda elected to play on, but what did happen was one of the most remarkable events in the whole history of the Hiroshima Cock’s Eye 3-Player Mahjong Club and Noda had the devil’s own luck not to get caught up in it.
The event to which we allude is this, videlicit, that Nobu started winning, and once he had started he just woudn’t stop! Now that was an event which we had thought was beyond the event horizon and as such it pretty much disproves everything we’ve been told about general relativity.
The first person to succumb to the rise of the Nobu was poor old Hanada-san, who had been sinking gently to the mezzanine floor up to that point was swiftly deposited in the coal cellar thereafter. It was Nobu’s achieving his first ever Ryanshi as Oya that did it. Hanada-san declared Riichi forgetting that it was Ryanshi, confessed his error and thereby committed his first Chombo of his hitherto brief career at our tables.
It may have been David who triggered the change in fortune. David was Oya when Nobu declared Riichi and was able to discard a couple of safe tiles but would need to get rid of the 6-Bamboo Dora if the hand took the fast route to Tempai. With 3s and 9s pretty much out in the open he had already decided to take the risk if the hand developed. It did, and so he did – and lost the bet!
Nobu took over as Oya and went on to rack up +102 in a single game, and then pulled in a further +34 in the final game of the evening, turning a -50 deficit into a +86 victory.
Mister Nobu rising
Nobu rising
Got the Nobu rising
Mister Nobu rising
Got to keep on rising…
Yes, Nobu must keep on rising if he is to excite the discomfiture of a certain lady just above him on the 3PMJ Grand Accumulated Results Table 2010.
The scores for the evening’s play were as follows:
Nobu –, -34, -16, +102, +34 = +86
Noda -16, +51, 0, –, — = +35
Jaime -4, –, +36, +5, -36 = +1
===
David +20, -8, –, -49, 0 = -37
Hanada –, -9, -20, -58,* +2 = -85
* Chombo