/jp/ Mahjong Equipment Buying Guide

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Mahjong Equipment Guide v1.2

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What you need
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Minimum requirements:
	Base 136 tiles
	Play space
	3 other people
	Some six-sided dice, usually 2.


Niceties:
	Table with a lip, or a mat.
	Point sticks
	Shuugi chips
	Yakitori markers


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The TL;DR what should I get?
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On the Japanese Amazon, look up AMOS Mahjong tile.  Pick out the set you like, and purchase.  Best set is the cheapest one.
https://amzn.to/2Jy8a0V
Google intensely for a Mahjong table like the one here that is affordable:
https://imgur.com/a/PqY0F3u
Buy your friends with food and beer to come over and teach them to play the game.


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Tiles: The most important part
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Types of sets out there:

Nearly every single country or even area in Asia has their own specific rules about the game, and even their own specific sets.  But the three sets you are most liable to run into are going to be American, Chinese, and hopefully Japanese sets.


Here are my recommendations for using each type of set to play Japanese rules.


American Sets:

If you live in the west (or at least America), the set you're most liable to run into is the American set, made for American "Mah Jongg" rather than just Mahjong.  These sets typically come with the base 136 tiles, but also add in 8 season/flower tiles EACH, as well as 8 Joker tiles.  They then come with 6 spare tiles, which leads to a total of 166.

It is not recommended that you ever purchase an American Mah Jongg set for any reason.  To begin with, American Mah Jongg tiles are much, much thinner than your regular tile.  Their face is roughly the size of a Chinese "Small" size tile, but they are still noticably thinner than a Japanese standard tile, which is SMALLER than the Chinese Small.  This makes them obnoxious to stack, and precarious to stand on their ends by themselves like the way other variations will play the game, requiring large plastic racks to hold the tiles and take up a lot of room on the table.  Additionally, American sets tend to be way, way more expensive than a normal Mahjong set, and you're liable to pay more money for less plastic.

HOWEVER, if you are desperate for a set, and you happen to have one already through a family member or a donation, then you can play Japanese Mahjong with the tile.  Simply remove all of the flower/season and Joker tiles, and you are ready to go.


Chinese sets:

These are actually the sets I recommend for beginners who don't know yet if they really want to get into the game.  Most Chinese sets come with 144 tiles, the base 136 and then 8 season/flower tiles.  They maintain proper tile size comparative to Japanese sets.  Additionally, they tend to be much, much larger, which is usually a bonus for us Gaijin with our monster-sized hands.

The reason I recommend Chinese sets are because they are much, much more easier to find in Western communities than Japanese sets, and by proxy, usually much cheaper.  You can simply Google-maps your hometown + Asian Import and you'll likely find an Asian supermarket that has Mahjong tiles for sale.  They will generally run around $30-50 USD, and you can inspect the tiles before buying.


WORD OF CAUTION:
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The most easily found sets come with absolutely huge tiles, known as "Hong Kong" tiles.  They are not only enormous, but also tend to come with cheaper paint.  If you go into an Asian import store, ask to take a look at the case, then open it up and just smell.  No, I'm not kidding.  If you're looking at a set with cheaper paints, you will get this absolutely noxious smell from the case.  And I don't mean that "Oh maybe it smells kind of funny?", I mean you'll take a whiff and immediately think "Oh I think maybe I just got cancer".

The tiles for the most part will not smell, and you can simply dispose of the case and the atrocious smell.  However, keep in mind that the paint is still cheap.  It is fairly easy to rub off spots on the tile's paint just through touching the tiles with a slightly greasy finger.  In my experience, my other tiles appear to be much more resilient to that, but the Hong Kong set I had turned almost all of the backs of the bamboo tiles a completely different shade of light blue.
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"Should I get a Chinese set because it has those numbers on the tile?"

This is more of a teaching question, but in my personal experience, the answer is no.  There are millions more sets without those numbers than there are with, and not knowing the 14 characters you have to learn to play Mahjong is really more of a hindrance in general than it is to go out of your way to get the tiles where they can see the numbers.  Additionally, and this is rather elitist of me I'll admit, but personal experience says that if the player is too unwilling to sit down for the 15 minutes it takes to learn to recognize 14 Chinese characters, they will never get to a point where you're playing regularly enough to justify the purchase of the tiles to begin with.

However, if you do seek the tiles with the numbers on them, one good negotiating tactic you can use is to act as though those numbers are a blemish on the tiles.  This is how the Chinese typically will see it, and if you treat the set as though they're damaged goods because some buffoon chiseled in those atrocious GwaiLou numbers into them, you can typically haggle with them to get it cheaper.  Don't feel bad about doing this, they mark those tiles up rather highly.


Japanese sets:

Japanese sets are unfortunately the hardest sets to acquire.  Japanese sets only use 136 tiles, however they typically come with 4 flower/season tiles to fill up space, and 4 Red Five tiles you can use to swap out for the optional Akadora rule.  They are the only sets that have these tiles, in addition to the other optional rules that different Japanese sets might come with, such as gemmed Haku/White Dragons, or even gemmed or gold 5s.  If you absolutely MUST play with these rules, and you don't want to modify a Chinese set to incorporate this, then you must get a Japanese set.


"Should I get an authentic Japanese set or a Yellow Mountain Import set?"
Before, I would have said with absolute certainty and a lot of pretense to buy the YMI set.  The reasoning for this was because even though most Japanese sets were listed with reasonable prices of around $30 for cheaper ones that were still nice, you were bound to get royally screwed over by Japanese shipping, which would often outright double the cost or more.  And as of right now, it still does.

HOWEVER!

Recently, a company named AMOS, a large maker and distributor of Mahjong automatic tables and tiles has become extremely gaijin friendly of late, and is even striking up deals with Los Angelos Mahjong club LAPOM to begin a line distributing the equipment over in the USA.  While no confirmation of tiles yet, this is likely to mean that in the coming months, there may be authentic Riichi Mahjong sets available in America for reasonable prices.

Additionally, AMOS tiles are shipping out more friendly to outside of Japan.  While EMS-Maou-sama is still jacking up the price of shipping outside of Japan, you can find a reasonable priced set that even WITH the ridiculous shipping, promises a 6 day return time that is actually about 8 USD cheaper than a YMI set will cost you.

Here is a shortened link for the cheap AMOS set:
https://amzn.to/2Jy8a0V
Picture of shipping costs and time on the set:
http://prntscr.com/nnecvb


"Just under $70 is still a little expensive for me.  Is there a cheaper set, or maybe even a different color than bamboo yellow?"

This is where you'd probably get screwed.  But give it time, and hopefully AMOS-san will offer much needed variety in the color choices.


"I heard that Japanese sets are better/different to YMI tiles.  Should I just scrap my old tiles and get new ones?"
If you pick up a cheap Japanese set and compare it to YMI, you will notice a difference right away.  To begin with, Japanese sets use a much better plastic in their tiles.  The tiles of a Japanese set have this kind of porcelain feel to them.  They are very smooth and not rough on the fingers.  They also use much more of the face on a Japanese tile for the design than the YMI tiles use, and the paint seems to have a much higher gloss to them, which seems to reflect more light.
https://imgur.com/a/HSbS5DY
Some people will say that the YMI are smaller, and this is true in a technical sense.  However, a direct comparison as in the screen shot above shows that they are not actually that much bigger.  The YMI sizes are very similar to the Japanese.  They have the same height and depth to them, but the Japanese tiles are ever so slightly wider.  But only slightly.  As you can see, it took 8 of the Japanese tiles side by side to start to almost edge out an extra half-tile in size over the YMI sets.

As nice as the Japanese set is, the quality difference is only "noticeable", not "astounding".  You will be able to feel the difference between it and YMI sets, but not to a point where it will justify purchasing entire new sets willy nilly.  If you're purchasing new, there is no reason not to get an AMOS set however.


Alternate methods:

Another thing you can always try, and maybe you'll get lucky, is hop on ebay and look for Mahjong sets.  This takes a bit of work, but if you know how to work the search function to remove terms like "American" and "Chinese" and do some digging, you might find someone offering a set for cheap, or maybe even a vintage set.  I don't typically recommend vintage sets, but if you get a good deal, then I can't argue with results.  Just make sure you calculate shipping costs and read the fine print VERY carefully.  You don't want to find out you got a "great deal!" on an empty replacement case.


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Tables and mats
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For some reason, a lot of players tend to fluctuate to something called the "Junk Mat".  This is a Mahjong Mat that can be rolled up and flopped onto any table surface.  Additionally, it has little pockets in the trays to put point markers.

I don't actually typically recommend Junk Mats.

The reason for this is because Junk Mats suffer the same problem that Japanese sets do in that they have to pass through the EMS-maou-sama to get outside of Japan.  So the cheap cost immediately has its price jacked up to roughly the price of a set of YMI tiles, or decent Chinese tiles.  Personally, I have never really been impressed by the quality of the material, and the foam is so thick that it completely erases the sound of the tile hitting the table, which for me is an important part of the fun.

Instead, I actually recommend taking the time and effort to find a proper Mahjong table, like the one I found on Ebay here:
https://imgur.com/a/PqY0F3u
I found a table called the "Puzzle Jigsaw" tables (they change the name up often, but this is the one I saw the most) and I haven't been able to shut up about it since.  The price on these things is only slightly more expensive than a Junk Mat will typically cost, but it offers free shipping on most of the ads I've seen for it, and it's much, much more higher quality than the Junk Mat.  There is some cheapness to it, especially on the bottom area, but considering what you're getting for the slight additional cost more than makes up for it.  It also has this beautiful "tonk" sound it makes when a tile hits the surface of the table that is to die for.  While considered rude, if you're with friends, it's a wonderful sound to make.  Also comes with little drawers and Cup/Cigarette trays on each corner which can be rotated inwards.  Highly recommended.

Ebay has been where I've able to find these, however I recently did another search and couldn't find any.  But you can always do a Google search or check your local Asian Import store might have something available, or you might be able to find it in stock elsewhere.  If you absolutely must, the Junk Mat isn't something to snub your nose at, but a table is where it's at.


DIY:
You can totally build your own table, and it's not very hard to do at all.  It's just a flat piece of wood on evenly cut legs.  Maybe a drawer system.  The hardest part of doing it is getting the cloth.  What you want is something called "Poker Speed Cloth", which is cloth designed specifically for Casino tables.  If that's too expensive, Velvet is always a good choice.  Fun project if you have an afternoon and too little money, too much time.


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Other Equipment
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"I bought an alternative set and now I'm missing X"

Dice:
I'm assuming you know how to find dice, but you want specifically the small ones that come with the set so you can fit them in.  Your best bet is your local board game store.  They might sell some six-siders (commonly referred to as d6) that are tiny that you might be able to find.  Otherwise, you're just going to have to continue robbing that monopoly set that nobody plays.


Point Markers:
You can always use poker chips or pen & paper, but if you're looking for the "Bone" points, Yellow Mountain Import sells them separately, as do many other places such as "Where the Winds blow".  They're actually surprisingly easy to find.  You can also get fancy colored sticks from Japan directly, and I don't believe the import costs on those are very high at all.


Table Marker:
Yellow Mountain Import sells them, as well as other stores, such as "Where the Wind Blows".  You can also just take a little card and write "East" and "South" on both sides and flip that as well, but they aren't too expensive.


Shuugi Chips:
The little chips that you might see in the Japanese set pictures.  If you really have to play with them for some reason, they're just cheaply made poker chip disks.  You can find a good bicycle poker chip set and use those pretty well.


"What are these funny optional things I see?"

Gemmed "X" tiles:
Those only come in Japanese sets I'm afraid, so if you want to play with those, you either need to mark a tile with some paint, or you need to be on the look out for a set that has the option you want to play with.

Yakitori Marker:
You can find these on YMI surprisingly.  Also in another place called "Where the Winds Blow", which is fairly weird because it exclusively caters to American Mahjong.  I guess American players really love this rule for some reason.


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Contact
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I generally hang out in the /jp/ Mahjong thread, but if you need to contact me for whatever reason, you can find me at kaitengiri@gmail.com