Let's Play With the Japanese Wordplay ep.2

Previously i've posted one of the Japanese wordplay, Goroawase. Now we play with another game, Shiritori. 

Shiritori (しりとり) is a Japanese word game in which the players are required to say a word which begins with the final kana of the previous word. しりとり literally means 'taking the bottom' or 'taking the end' as the Japanesee language is traditionally written in vertical columns, from the top down.

Basic rules

• Only nouns are permitted.
• No word ending in the mora N (ん) are permitted, as no Japanese word begins with that character.
• Words may not be repeated.
• Phrases connected by no (の) are permitted, but only in those cases where the phrase is sufficiently fossilized to be considered a "word".

Example: sakura (さくら) → rajio (ラジオ) → onigiri (おにぎり) → risu (りす) → sumou (すもう) → udon (うどん)

The player who used the word udon lost this game. If you playing in a group, a person who is in contravention of one of the rules is 'out' and adjudicates for the remaining players.

Optional rule can be added or ignored, such as dakuten and handakuten can be ignored or added (that is, suppu 'スープ' could be followed by furo 'ふろ'). Homonyms spelled with the same kana but different kanji—e.g., su (す) can either be spelled as 巣 (nest) or 酢 (vinegar)—may be permitted. Common pronouns and place names may be permitted. Example: Edo jou (えどじょう) lit. Edo castle is safe. And last, A long vowel may either be ignored or considered as a vowel, Mikisaa (ミキサー/みきさあ) can be followed by either sakura (さくら) or aki (あき).

If you are getting bored with the simplicity of the basic rules, you may limit words to a certain genre, restrict the length of the words to three or more syllables, or only permit words beginning and ending with dakuten or handakuten. You may even go as far as to use the final two kana instead of the last one (in which case only the first kana may not be ん).

Similar word chain games exist in other languages as well, but they are rarely as popular as the Japanese variation, probably because the language is very well suited to this type of activity.