Hi, my name is Ro Sato and I'm Japanese born and raised in Japan. Unlike normal Japanese, thanks to my hippie parents, I was put into International School from kindergarten and up. So I had American education instead of Japanese. Then, I studied Film /Video at School of Visual Arts in New York. I wanted to be a film director, but in two of my attempts to direct, my lead actresses ran out on me while in production! That was enough for me to give up on that carrier and I move on to be computer graphics animator instead. Computer characters listen to me well and I’ve had absolutely no problem since then.

Because of my background, my boardgame history is not much different from Shawn’s, I’ve played Sorry, Clue, Monopoly and Risk during my youth. There are not many good Japanese boardgame. We have the Japanese version of Monopoly or The Game of Life, just like rest of the world. I am pretty good playing Shogi, a Japanese chess. I use to play with my grandfather and he taught me how to play. Funny thing was, I never beat my grandfather, but then he later confessed that he had been cheating since I became good at it! Throughout high school and college, I haven’t really played boardgame. May be some Mah-Jongg and Uno occasionally, but I’ve encountered my first German boardgame, Scotland Yard. At the time, I didn’t know it was German, but it gave me quite an impression. Since then, I’ve been following European boardgame scene. There were not much information at the beginning and the shops were more limited, like just 1 or 2 shops around in entire Japan! All this started improving!
since the release of Settlers of Catan in Japan. I also found BoardGameGeek that solved most of my problems and needs for getting information about boardgames. Not only that, I’ve made friends with fellow geek like, Ken Shoda, Rick Heli, Hans Persson, William Tan, Shawn Low and more friends from all over the world, which is very exciting. I was so fond of the BoardGameGeek, I decide to create Japanese boardgame database myself. It’s called play:game database and it’s been running like 3 years now. My database of course runs in much smaller scale in terms of number of user and functionality, but I have good example to follow.

Last year was pretty exciting year for me. I was commissioned to translate boardgame rules from English to Japanese and I’d been successfully doing that throughout last year. I also participated in project “Japon Brand”, a first large attempt to promote Japanese games and designers in Essen, Germany. Although I was unable to attend in it, I heard it created good buzz and helped people recognize some of Japanese finest gems. Hopefully we will be introducing more new games from Japan this year too. And midst of doing all this simultaneously, I also worked on Guenter Cornett and Michael Uhlemann’s new game “Greentown”, doing graphics for the masters. This was my first time doing graphics for commercial boardgame. I was pretty lucky to work with Guenter. He is such a nice person and he is also very easy to work with. He gave me lots of freedom in terms of creativity without sacrificing too much of the actual game content. Designing graphics for boardgame is one of the hardest !
tasks for graphic designer, since there are so many restrictions. You just can’t sacrifice the functionality in the game and yet it has to look good. Looking at the people’s comments on BGG about Greentown, lots of people suggested that it would have been better if “Train” theme was chosen instead of Tourist touring in a rural city. And they are probably right, but me and Guenter both figured there were enough train games around, besides we were pressured by deadline, so I couldn’t do a different theme. After all, there is nothing like having the actual copy of Greentown with me in hand! The game looked good and at least I enjoy playing it.

So that’s about all I want to tell about myself. I hope there is something interesting to read.

Link reference:
play:game database - http://www.gamers-jp.com/playgame/db_newsa.php
Japon Brand - http://japonbrand.gamers-jp.com/index-j.html
Greentown - http://www.bambusspiele.de/ http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/24122

Something more about myself:
1.Hooked on playing Texas Hold'em Poker.
2.Addicted to Sports Betting.
3.Big sports buff, my religion is football(Soccer).

1) Do you have a gaming group? If so, what is it like?

2) Is language a problem in getting games out in Japan? I'm sure not every Japanese had the benefit of 'hippy' parents and education at an international school.

3) Did you also design cards for the GMT game Flagship?

4) How did you get involved with Greentown?

5) Are you working on any other games?

1) I see that you don't have any games rated 10. Which game has come the closest to being a 10 for you so far?

2) Which picture is your favorite of the hundreds of pictures you've uploaded to BGG?

3) Do you have any functionality on your Japanese gaming site that you wish could be incorporated into BGG here?

4) What is your favorite game originating from Japan?

5) I'm a big Seattle Mariners fan. Would you be able to tell me just how big Ichiro is over there, and how many Japanese actually follow the Mariners because of him?

1) What's with your avatar?

So I invite my friends over to my house almost every weekend.

1. It must be difficult to find Euro games, and even more difficult to find games with rules in Nihongo. How does your game group handle this?

2. How popular is go among young people? The interwebs often says that every boy who reads Jump comics now has a keen interest, but is this true? If so, have shogi and mahjong benefited also?

3. When overseas visitors come to Sydney, I like to take them on a walk from the Spit Bridge through to Manly beach (there are Koori rock paintings at the midpoint), then take a ferry from Manly to Sydney Harbour to see the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge by night. Where would you take visitors to Tokyo for a day trip? What cool things in Tokyo (or Japan generally) should everyone see?

4. As a gamblin' man (according to your two truths and a lie), you must be a fan of pachinko. How close have you come to winning a helicopter?

I know it happens over there and there are groups but I just don't see it taking off in Japan. My question do you think I'm totally wrong (I hope I am)? What I envision is just a bunch of 2 player games. Maybe the younger generation will do so who knows.

Also what's up with Simpei they had instructional videos of it going in some stores and it was in practically ever game store I went.

Also could you send me about 20 Nintendo DS Lites over to the States...we're sold out over here and need some that's Ro.

What was it like growing up being educated in an International school? Are you happy with your parent's choice? Do you think that had anything to do with your love of boardgames?

Are you hoping for any particular type of game to show up in the next few years? Possibly of japanese design?

So we have the "Euros" and the "Ameritrash"... What are games from Japan called? What is a typical modern Japanese game?

Good job on spreading the good /boardgames/ news.
At last, I'll go with #1. If you're a sport buff, there's a high chance that you would bet on sport and vice-versa. I bet you don't really like Texas Holdem but another kind of poker, Energie poker maybe?
PS: If you ever visit Montreal, please give me a call we play Reach Mahjong over here. There's also a nice group of people playing Euros downtown on most saturdays.

Aren't you playing games with your family? If so, what kind of games are you playing? It is sometimes difficult to select a game playable with family...

Im a huge Cherry Blossom fan, have been ever since 1995 when New Zealand flogged them 145 - 17. I'm just wondering if your a fan of rugby and if its getting big over in Japan? Its a shame you guys didn't get the 2011 RWC.

Japan is so well known for video games, is there any video games you would like to see made into boardgames?

Who are your favorite Japanese directors, both past and present?

why ..you haven't got soccer chess..(i mean.... is a japanese game) ?
congrat. for GW

Hi Rick-san and Tsubaki-san. I thank you both. =)

James-san Domo Arigato

That’s one of the traumatic games for Japanese National team. LOL I think we are getting better, since then. Rugby is not getting any bigger unfortunately. One of the problems is that, we do not have professional league. Players who play in the league works for the company who sponsors it. I guess we need to include more New Zealanders in our team.


This is kind of reversed but lots of Japanese video game producers are actually looking into boardgames. Video games are running out of ideas and traditional video game genre just don’t sell a lot anymore.

Why do you hate sports boardgames?

What new games if any are you looking forward to playing this year?

Because Japan is so technologically advanced in many areasdo you think this could give japan an edge in the world of boardgaming? If Japan got serious about boardgames do you think we would see a huge influx of games with technology mixed in with them?

Have you seen the movie The Castle of Cagliostro? The best animated film ever in my opinion.

In Australia we hear alot about Japan not teaching anything or the wrong thins about WW2, and it gets people very angry in Australia. Are we hearing the truth or is this just newsmaking?

These games are very good and very popular right now. Have you played these games and are there any other wargames or history games by Japanese designers that should be reprinted in English versions?

1) If you could travel back in time and witness any one historical event, what event would you choose? Assume that you could understand any language(s) spoken and that you knew any people and events leading up to the one you choose.
2) The same question, but apply it to the future.