Visiting the Tokyo City Grid

by Jens Kreutzer

This is an editorial as well as a report, in a way, since I am directly involved in it all - it is also the first time in my little series of "Netrunner around the world" that it is a guest who is writing about Netrunner activity in a City Grid or a country instead of a local player. It is also an apology, since the release of this issue has been delayed for three months; the reason for this is my moving from Cologne to Tokyo for at least one-and-a-half years, studying Japanese and (hopefully) writing my Ph. D. thesis. In short, I have been rather busy.

From the TRC list of City Grids, I knew that there were Grids in Tokyo as well as in Sapporo (northern Japan), and I was hoping that I would be able to continue to play Netrunner from time to time on the other side of the globe. I contacted Tada-san of Tokyo City Grid and Takano-san from Sapporo; they were very friendly and immediately invited me to join the players of Japan. And so, one Sunday, Tada-san and I met in front of Shinjuku Station (the biggest station in the world, it is said, with more than a million customers each day) and proceeded on to the Hyper Arena, one of the local gamers' haunts. It costs a few yen to be allowed to enter a room with lots of tables, where card players can then indulge themselves.

Maybe there isn't any better place in the world for playing Netrunner than Shinjuku. The highrise buildings, neon advertisements and stylish people come right out of Neuromancer or Bladerunner, and you expect a Trauma Team AV-4 Aerodyne buzzing by overhead any second. Chiba being just next door (30 minutes by subway) also adds a whole new thrill to playing a Loan, since the Chiba goons won't have to go far. Fortunately, there wasn't any feeling of a Tokyo-Chiba Infighting at the Hyper Arena-quite the contrary: Five enthusiastic players (some of them living in Chiba) showed up, and on another occasion, we were nine in all. It is amazing just how lively the Netrunner scene is in a country that hasn't had many shops selling the cards for quite a long time. They have to get almost everything from the U.S. by mail order, and my impression was that people often just do not own a whole lot of cards.

Why hasn't this presence been more widely known to Netrunner players around the world? Well, the players of Japan have their own Netrunner mailing list, in Japanese, of course - most players there are perhaps not that much at home with the English language, and of course it makes sense to communicate in one's mother tongue. The downside is that players from abroad cannot follow the discussion there. Right now, the list sees at least as much traffic as the "big" Netrunner mailing list; an automatic program posts the data (with translated card texts) of two randomly selected cards (one Corp, one Runner) to the list each week, so that players can post their comments. It is a really good idea in my opinion.

It is huge fun playing the members of Tokyo City Grid. The atmosphere is quite pleasant (most games start with a little bow towards your opponent), and although many strategies one can encounter there are "international" in a way, playing styles differ in subtle ways. Also imagine my delight when in one game, my opponent installed a Japanese Water Torture! Communication is in Japanese only, but that only helps me with my studies. Far from being "fluent Navaho", my Japanese is slowly improving.

Recently, two players from Sapporo City Grid flew down to Tokyo for a weekend. We had a great Sealed tournament with 12 players, with lots of Blackmail, Glacier, and Rent-I-Con action in my case. There are tough opponents in Japan, and time and again I was really surprised by some of their moves. We even had that rarest of all things at that day: A new player started playing Netrunner, buying a starter deck!

The gist of all of this: Though the interview with Neal above paints a gloomy picture of the state of Netrunner activity, there are places in the world where it is still pretty much alive.