International Gaming

The world sits before me on Steph’s kotatsu covered in little plastic soldiers. My forces have concentrated themselves in Africa and South America while Steph’s, Ben’s, and Isabel’s are scattered throughout the rest of the untamed world. The dice clatter in my hand as I survey the hostile force trying to take my territory of Congo. Clatter, clatter, clatter, CLAT! The dice are cast—my white defending dice come up 6 and 5! My opponent’s red attacking dice settle on 4, 3, and 1. YES, the Congo is safe!

This is a familiar scene from our regular games of RISK (the game of global domination) that have been taking place since my parents sent over the board game a couple months ago as a birthday gift (thanks mom and dad!). While JETs have MANY exciting things to keep them occupied every single moment of every single day, there are times when sitting down to a nice game of RISK or Monopoly is just what the doctor ordered.

But like with most simple things (eating, speaking, dancing), playing board games with people from other parts of the world offers a slightly new dimension to the experience. Our game of Monopoly that took place a while ago involved folks from FIVE different countries—Canada, Japan, England, New Zealand, and America!



As we all sat down to play, there was a moment when everyone realized that in a way, we were representing our respective countries in this competition of financial conquest. We exchange glances, silently sang our national anthems, and dealed out the colorful money. Some people were a little unhappy that the version of Monopoly we were playing was the American version and thus had different place names than they were used to (a fact I didn’t realize until that night). But nonetheless, our game was intense and I did America proud by robbing everyone else of their funds and making a monopoly of our international board.

In more recent times, we’ve been playing a lot of RISK—the game where one tries to conquer the world via armies and the rolling of dice. As you can imagine, playing this board game with an international crowd while living in country that is NOT your homeland is an especially fun experience. The usual crowd of global conquerors consists of two Brits, a French-Canadian, and me, the American. We all enjoy taking our friend’s respective homelands and then mocking them for not defending it better. The number of historical references one can make during the game is astounding—especially when some of the players are from countries that have notoriously raped and pillaged the world. I always get a little antsy when my troops march around the Middle Eastern territories and recently when I moved a large force into Japan, I decided it best to base them all in Okinawa instead of on the mainland.



Living abroad and being friends with people from all over the world is one of my favorite parts of the JET experience. While I sometimes don’t understand what other westerners are saying because their casual vocab is filled with unfamiliar terms and spoken with an accent, I do enjoy learning more about the people of the world. The more I know, the better equip I’ll be to march into their lands, take their territories, and establish myself as Emperor of the World. Yeah America!