Kyukei, in Japanese, means “Break!” (as in Break time).

Althouh I’m writing 3 papers at the same time, I had a big break this saturday. During most of the day, I went to this event organized by the group “Asia Exchange”, which purposes to get Japanese Students and other Asian students closer together. About 25 people got together to play in Yoyogi park. We ate bento and did a bunch of different games. I met the folks from Ajiryu just last week, actually, but I was invited to their meeting to organize the yoyogi day, so maybe one third of the games played there today were of my devising :-P. It was rather fun, but I got a big red scar in my cheek I’m not really sure where it came from (maybe it came from the 4 seasons and the demon game, or the chicken fight game, both very physical activities).

It was cool that I managed to make a bunch of very nice new acquitances. After the event, me and about other 6 people went to a nearby cafe in Shibuya, and I invited them to a Nijikai (party after the party), at my place. I got four people to come, plus two Brazilian friends I invited on the spot via phone. The 7 of us got to my place, had some ice cream, fried potatos (I cooked those), played carcassone, a bunch of card games (the losers of the card games had to play twister), and saw some funny you tube videos (mostly Ramenz comedies). During one of the twister games, I must have put too much stress into one of my hands, it is still hurting.

At midnight most of them left – I still had one last game session, though, with some friends still living in Brazil. I had invited some of my former RPG mates to try out a game of Sword and Wizardry online, using IRC and a flash drawing chat site. The flash site was too heavy and not working properly in my computer, so we did the dungeon in the quick-play guide with only text. It was actually much more fun than I expected – the three players really got into the old-school feeling, and started abusing the corpses of their fallen enemies to test the rooms for traps and other secrets. We did about 3 encounters (6 rooms), before I got too tired to go on and halted the game.

It was really nice to play S&W, but I’m really not into this whole “play online with text chat” game. It just doesn’t translate into the feeling hat I like when playing real RPGs. I guess I’ll have to convince the Kanda players do play S&W.

Now Sunday has come – I have rested enough, now I have a week to finish writing my Journal paper. Starting today!