While at Misawa Air Base, in Northern Japan, I ran over 20 DCI sanctioned Magic:The Gathering tournaments. I attended the nearby (several hours away by car or train) Japanese sanctioned tournaments when I could and thoroughly enjoyed playing with the Japanese players. I also very much enjoyed trading cards with them and did my best spread older cards (American beta, unlimited, and revised editions) throughout Aomori Prefecture with my trading for Japanese 4th, Chronicles, and 5th Editions cards. Lots of fun.

This is the site of the UFO HOBBY store's Magic:The Gathering tournaments in Hachinohe city an hour drive south of Misawa at the nearest "big" city.  I can't think of a better setting for playing games.

Here are some pictures from a tournament there in Summer 1996.  Note the low tables on tatami mat floors with shoji screen doors.  Alas, it was pretty cold in winter even with portable kerosene heaters, but once 40 people packed into those two rooms, it warmed up okay. 

Here are some of the japanese players whom I had the great fortune to meet and invite onto the bases for the Misawa Gamers Guild sponsored tournaments. The player with the white baseball cap is Mr. Yuuichi Mikami, a future schoolteacher, from Aomori City and the one with the plaid pants is Mr. Ohsawa, who was from Misawa Youth Chamber of Commerce. He also started running tournaments in Misawa City at the public hall for the local Japanese players.

Here we are at the height of our run of tournaments held at the Enlisted Club on Saturdays with 24 players from the base and from Hachinohe, Misawa, and Aomori cities.  Some of the players had to get up at 6am and drive 3 hours south to Misawa to attend our Classic-Restricted format tournaments.   As they were the only ones of that type held in Japan,  it was really interesting to watch the Classic ratings in Japan swing and show off players at who came to Misawa. At one time we did have a few players in the Top 10 in the world rankings.

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Last Modified:09sep99