Leggett's Japanese Chess

I returned this week from a family vacation in Toronto with a new item for the bookshelf: Japanese Chess by Trevor Leggett. Outside of the fact that I paid basically twice the amazon price at an Indigo bookstore, I am pleased with the book. It's most certainly for beginners (even going so far as to add a silly paper board and paper pieces in the back), however I was able to pick up a few ideas in the annotated sample game and the section on openings is presented well.

As Toronto has a large Japanese population and is packed full of Japanese restaurants (there are, literally, 2 or 3 on every block in the area we stayed downtown!), I began to wonder if I could perhaps find a new Shogi board. Unfortunately, I could find no Japanese shops at all! I even asked one sushi restaurant's waitress and manager for advice and they could offer no help.

During the trip I also became quite addicted to sudoku but that's another topic... :D