Game Night!

My friend Jon lives on a small Okinawan island with only 500 people, called Tonaki. As you can imagine, there isn't much to do on such a small rock. But that doesn't get Jon down! He's full of great ideas for ways to spend time with his neighbors. Every Friday Jon hosts a group of fellow Tonakans at his place for Game Night. I've been hearing about how fantastic Game Night is for many months now. Finally, Jon decided to bring Tonaki's most recently acquired board game over on the ferry, to show a few of us what the spirit of Tonaki Game Night is all about.

Oh boy is game night fun! I haven't played board games since I was a wee lass. I think of games as something for kids but boy am I wrong. After about 5 minutes of Jon's explanation of the rules of Settlers of Catan, my eyes glazed over. I didn't remember games being so complicated. In one ear and out the other. The only thing I remember thinking was, "...and you play this with a group of non-English speakers every week?" Amazing.

As the first roll of the die came around, I knew I was in for trouble. The only instructions that my wildly flailing memory could recall were:
"there is no maritime trading during the Special Building phase!!!!"
It seemed so important... but I had no idea what it meant.

No worries no worries. 4 hours and 5 beers later we all knew what it meant. Let's do Game Night again! Next time it's Okinawopoly, a board game in the making by Hilary and Gabe. I'll keep you posted!