Learning Japanese Mahjong -Riichi Nomi Club of NYC @Anime NYC 2025
Back to: Anime NYC Main Page (Aug 2025)
There are many forms of the mahjong game, and at Anime NYC, the Riichi Nomi Mahjong club set up about 2 dozen tables to introduce attendees to the game. Riichi is a Japanese form of mahjong with a point scoring system and defensive play capability.
The first dozen or so tables included instructors from the club (to teach first-timers) while the rest were open play for people already familiar with the game. What was eye opening were the number of really experienced and expert players from the anime community. It seemed that quite a few people had become familiar with it from playing videogames.
If you didn’t make it to Anime NYC, you can still join and play with the Riichi Nomi club, a 501(c)(7) social nonprofit. They play every Tuesday and Sunday in Manhattan for NYC dwellers, and online every Monday and Wednesday. Their goal is teach this super fun variant of Majong to as many people as possible; a game they think is an awesome combination of luck and strategy.
You can always join this club as a member if you want – the $40 fee gets you things like merch and entry at tournaments that have prizes. They also use the funds to sell merch and do cool stuff like run tournaments and rent spaces. Plus, we’re told they throw a really fun holiday party at the end of every year.
Something COOL! (though expensive)
It’s something every Riichi mahjong player should know. Automatic mahjong tables.
These are super expensive (like $5,000) tables that shuffles tiles for you and build the walls automatically. You basically push all the tiles to the middle, and the table then uses magnets to mix and shuffle everything around, then builds walls with all tiles facing down.
It’s not a virtual game on a screen; these are real tiles. The cool thing is that the scoring sticks all have RFID chips in them so it automatically counts points and keeps score on a visible screen. It literally does everything for you, along with the math. They’re very popular in Japan and are starting to get popular here in the USA. You can get them for home use, but if you live in a tiny apartment (as most New Yorkers do) there’s a parlor in Midtown with a bunch of these tables.
You can think of them being like automatic bowling alleys. They set up all the pins, return balls and keep score. There’s no need to do any of it by hand, you simply start playing!
For more information, you can find most of their plans/discussons on Discord. Their Instagram page is also really active.
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More Info: https://www.riichi.nyc
Social Media:
Discord: https://discord.riichi.nyc
FB: RiichiNomiNYC
IG: nycriichinomi
X: nycriichinomi
YT: @RiichiNomi
Event: Anime NYC (Aug 2025)
