Japanese mahjong: Difference between revisions

There are three suits of number tiles each with sequences from one to nine. The three suits are the ''wan'' (characters), the ''pinzu'' (coins/circles)<!--Coins seems to be the best from a historical viewpoint and they do look like coins. Oh, but pinzu may actually mean circles in Japanese.-->, and the ''sou'' (bamboos). These three suits have the value of 1-9 according to their own suit. The face of the one of bamboo tiles have a bird design on them. The number one and nine tiles are called terminals. The number two through eight tiles are called simples. Runs don't wrap-around from nine to one.

A fourth set of mahjong tiles is composed of the ''[[Jihai|honor tiles]]''. This set of tiles can be further divided into ''[[kazehai|wind tiles]]'' and ''[[sangenpai|dragon tiles]]''. Unlike the standard suits previously mentioned, these honor tiles have special properties towards determining ''hand value''.  They can also be referred as "word tiles". Unlike the "numbered suits", the different honor tiles cannot be mixed together to form [[mentsu|tile groupings]].

Newer Japanese mahjong sets also come with four red-five ''dora'' tiles. One number five character tile, two number five circle tiles, and one number five bamboo tile are replaced with their matching red tiles. These red ''dora'' tiles can replace the appropriate number of standard five-tiles. Usage of the red ''dora'' tiles is optional. In addition, sets also come with flower and season tiles, but these are not used in the Japanese game. Instead, flower and seasons are used in other variations like Chinese and American styles.