Shogi is a Japanese chess game using a board and 40 pieces. In the formal type of the game called Hon-Shogi, the game is played between two players of Sente (the first player) and Gote (the opponent player). The two players alternate taking turns and the game is won when a king is captured. The pieces are divided into eight kinds, each of which is moved or captured according to the rule defined to each piece. The appeal of Shogi lies in the process of running the king to ground by capturing the opponent pieces and using it as the friendly pieces or promoting the pieces to add them different movement. Other than Hon-Shogi, there are some variants such as Hasami-Shogi (sandwiching shogi), in which the game is won when the agreed number of pieces are captured, or Mawari-Shogi for children, in which players cast four king pieces move according to how the piece fall.

The way to play with Bidama (glass marble balls) differs from one locality to another. In one basic version of the game, players draw a square (or a triangle) on the ground. The leading player puts his marble inside the square. Then the opponent player tries to knock the marble out of the square with his own marble. If it shoots the target marble rightly, he will win it, but in return for this, his marble is in the position to be shot. Another version involves digging several holes in the ground. The players take turns flipping their own marbles to shoot the holes according to the designated route. It is possible to add various optional rules to the play, for example, when a player mistakenly shoots another player’s marble on the way, this will carry some penalty. Or the player who reached the goal first will be given the right to hit his marble against another one and so on.