Teen Anime Club - Janken Competition

Howdy

For tonight's activity I decided to host a Janken Competition. Janken (じゃん拳 janken) is the Japanese equivalent of Rock Paper Scissors, but taken to a whole new level in terms of usage and importance in daily life. (WikiJet) To hold your own competition you will need a way to show videos of other competitions to give your teens an idea of how exciting the sport can be. They did air Rock Paper Scissors competitions on ESPN  while back but I don't think this will compel my teens to play. You will also need some props. Each opponent needs an item to shield their head and an item to hit with. I used two buckets and two paper swords. You can also use two hats and two pool noodles. Or two dust bins and two inflatables hammers like those at the carnival. The best way to explain the rules if you watch the video. I work in a public library and this video does show two men kissing instead of hitting each other. Kissing is against the rules but the video is fine. Depending on your audience you may need to find another video or alternative method of explaining the rules. Another good video is a Jankenpon contest on a Japanese game show.

Tataite Kabutte Jankenpon 

Basically if you win a round you get to bop your competitor on the head and the loser must defend themselves. It may not sound challenging but if you are trying to remember that paper covers rock you may also have have trouble knowing if you have won. And if you don't know who is winning it will be hard to guess whether you must pick up the bucket or the sword. You will probably need paper or a wipe board to track who has won and lost. You can offer a silly prize to the winner or just award them with bragging rights. Hopefully your teens will enjoy this and demand later rematches. I hope this activity makes a good go to game like Ninja for upcoming Anime Club meetings.  After playing this for about a half hour my teen insisted that we test this out with our gaming group.  I also found that the paper swords were not the best because they are hard to pick up. I'm sure your teens will want to make other improvements, perhaps even make this into an entire program. Good luck!

Laura
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