Generations of American youngsters grew up drawing straws or matchsticks, selecting a quantity or flipping cash to find out who was “in” or “out” when enjoying video games or for different choice processes.  

All of those require that the children, or generally adults, have straws, sticks, cash or no matter to make the choice. Nonetheless, lately a variety course of or sport referred to as “rock, scissors, paper” which requires nothing besides the participant’s fingers to find out who’s “in” or “out” has grow to be standard on this nation. 

Within the sport, a clinched fist represents a rock, two prolonged fingers forming a V characterize scissors and an open hand represents paper. When enjoying, the rock will break the scissors, the scissors will reduce the paper and the paper will wrap the rock, due to this fact if, for instance, one participant exhibits a clinched fist and the opposite exhibits two prolonged fingers, the clinched fist wins – rock over scissors. 

Youngsters in Japan have performed the sport for nicely over two centuries and when enjoying the sport which is known as Janken in Japan, they name out jan ken pon which kind of units the rhythm of the sport. Whereas the sport is mostly performed with two individuals, it may be performed with a bigger group of individuals as I noticed just lately. 

In late January, the Sister Cities Council hosted a sukiyaki dinner for a delegation from Kameoka together with Mayor Katsuragawa. As at all times, the delegation had introduced with them various small items for individuals they met with throughout their time right here. 

They took the small items to the dinner intending to present one to every particular person current, nevertheless there have been considerably extra individuals current than they anticipated, so their resolution was to play a variation of Janken. 

One particular person is designated because the chief, on this case it was Mayor Katsuragawa. As he referred to as out jan ken pon, he and all of the visitor confirmed their hand to be both a rock, scissors or paper. 

Everybody whose hand was the identical because the mayor’s hand remained standing. Everybody else was out of the sport and took a seat.  After about three rounds, the variety of individuals nonetheless standing was about equal to the variety of small items so the sport ended. 

Larry Jones is a member of the Stillwater Sister Cities Council.