Yesterday at a thrift store, Tod stumbled upon an old Trivial Pursuit game in a dusty original box wrapped in cling film with an oddly printed out import label on it.
We both have fond memories of playing Trivial Pursuit around our family tables, so he snatched it up for 2000 yen.
Upon unboxing, we realised that it wasn’t an import. This was a 1984 Trivial Pursuit original edition in Japanese. Oooooh! Hard Mode activate!
And we played it. It was hard. First of all, the questions had to be read in Japanese or translated with the phone. I was sort of impressed that I was actually able to read a few aloud and I understood the gist of lots of them even when I couldn’t say the kanji. Moments like this help me realise I am not completely illiterate.
But I am pretty ignorant of Japanese history and pop culture. At least half of the questions were specific to songs, movies, and books that have never crossed my path, and Japan’s current events circa 1984 – topics which Tod & I are not aware of.
Sometimes I was close, but didn’t have specific details for the answer. For example, “On January 19, 1969, into what place did the 4th riot police storm and lift the blockade?” Oh! I was thrilled that I knew it was about the university student riots, but I didn’t know the answer on the back of the card: Yasuda Hall at Todai.
We did learn a couple of things along the way:
- Awaji is the island in the Seto Inland Sea whose team won the 1957 Koshien baseball championship. I got this right with a lucky guess since I only know one island in Seto Uchi.
- Hideo Noguchi, the scientist formerly featured on the 1000 yen bill, burned his left hand when he fell into a fire at age 4. Tod guessed incorrectly and then we did some Googling.
- “One bound” is the katakana term for a ‘dead ball‘ in baseball where the pitch hits the ground before reaching the batter. I got this one wrong but it wasn’t about language; I’m not a sports person.
We played for 4 hours with a break for dinner. I collected all my pies and got to the center multiple times, failing every final question Tod gave me. He caught up and won on his first visit to the center with a correct answer for this Pink category question:
Despite the challenges, it was great fun playing the Trivial Pursuit Japan edition. If you’d like to come play with us, give me a shout.
