[CC#11] The First Game I Ever Figured Out (Patreon)

When I was in elementary school, I was made to carry the key to our house around my neck on a string. I was what was called a “key child.” From around the 1970s, families where both parents worked gradually became more common.

When I was in the lower grades, I was already back home shortly after noon, so I could play as much as I wanted until evening. But I had household chores to do, and I could not go out to play until I had finished them.

First, I had to bring in the laundry and fold it. Then I had to water the plants in the garden. I had to vacuum every room in the house. I had to wash the rice and leave it soaking in water. In winter, I had to put kerosene into the heater. There was quite a lot to do. Even if I ran home and finished everything as quickly as possible so I could go play with my friends, sometimes they had already gone without me, and I would end up alone.

Perhaps because they felt sorry for me, the older couple next door often called out to me. The man was a bus driver, and when he happened to have a day off during the week, he would invite me over to his house. On those occasions, he would always bring a wooden engawa bench (a backless long bench) out into the garden. We would sit facing each other and play various games. We played proper shogi (a board game often called the Japanese version of chess), but he also taught me hasami-shogi, kuzushi-shogi, mawari-shogi, and other games.＊These are games played with shogi pieces on a shogi board, using simpler rules that even children can understand.

He also taught me various other board games, such as Othello, Diamond Game, and a cavalry flag-capturing game. Before winning with his final move, the man would give me a hint. It was as if he was telling me, “Think carefully.” He was always smiling and kind, and with that same gentle smile, he would quietly wait for my move for as long as it took.

I learned that even the simplest game has its own tactics and ways of outthinking your opponent, and that you can never win unless you learn them and figure out how to beat the game. I also learned that the real competition begins only after you have understood them.……

Even so, it was rare for me to beat him, and there was no game that I could truly say I had figured out. The man patiently and carefully taught me how to win against him.

Even now, whenever I think about making a game, this experience comes back to me. How can I make it more interesting? How can I create a development that will move the player? I design games as if I am trying to recreate what I felt at that time.

There was a dog named El at the man's house. It was a Spitz, with a pure white, fluffy coat. In the evening, we would stop playing games and I would join him in taking El for a walk. We would walk along the embankment of the large river near his house, blowing grass whistles and being amazed at the real speed at which the setting sun disappeared behind the mountains to the west.

Sometimes, while looking out at the flow of the river, the man would talk to me with a slightly sympathetic expression about how I helped with the housework every day. Even when I casually told him that I did not mind doing it at all, his expression seemed a little sad at those moments.

For me, doing all the household chores as quickly as possible after coming home from school felt almost like a game. My daily goal was to finish everything within the short amount of time before my friends came to ask me to play.

The clothesline in the garden was too high for me to reach, so I would hook a stick with a Y-shaped end onto the line and lower it down. First, I would remove all the clothespins. Then I would slide all the laundry along the line at once, gather it to one side, and take it all off. I could fold it later, so I would simply carry as much laundry as I could in my arms, run to the back door, and throw it inside without even taking off my shoes.

Then I would immediately run back into the garden, turn the faucet connected to the hose, and pull out just enough of the reel-type hose. As soon as the water started flowing, I would quickly water the plants from one end to the other. When that was finished, I would wind up the hose and go to the kitchen to wash the rice. The old gas rice cookers were not as high-performance as the ones we have today, so if the rice was not soaked in water long enough, it would become hard.

After folding all the laundry I had thrown in through the back door earlier, I would put it temporarily on the living-room table and then start vacuuming. Once I finished the first floor, I would go upstairs and clean three rooms. Two of them had tatami floors, and one was a Western-style room with carpet. When cleaning the tatami rooms, dirt along the black edges of the tatami (heri) was especially noticeable, so I would run the vacuum cleaner carefully along those edges. When it looked like it would take too long, I sometimes focused only on the edges and did the rest a little more carelessly.……

This whole series of tasks became faster every year as I grew, and once I became accustomed to them, my body would move automatically through each step, even while I was thinking about strategies for the marble games I was going to play with everyone afterward.

Perhaps, after all, the first game I ever figured out on my own was helping around the house.

(Automatic translation by AI)