From Buenos Aires to the pro tables

I grew up in Buenos Aires speaking Spanish. I taught myself English from around the age of ten, and at eleven or twelve I started Japanese from a website, because I wanted to translate the music, games and anime I liked. Later came certificates in Japanese and Chinese at the University of Buenos Aires language center (2009–2011) and a degree in literary and specialized translation. My method for languages has never been more sophisticated than what I told an interviewer in 2019: keep stepping forward, even if you get things wrong. It turned out to work for mahjong too.

Akagi, Saki and tiles from Chinatown

Riichi mahjong came through friends who were into Akagi and Saki, two mahjong manga that both became anime. I started an “Argentine mahjong club” thread on an anime forum. We bought a set of Chinese tiles in Buenos Aires’ Chinatown and built the walls by hand, and I wrote up the Japanese rules so everyone in the circle was playing the same game.

In a way, I’ve been writing rule sheets for other people ever since.

xkime on Tenhou

On 6 October 2009 I registered on Tenhou, the Japanese online mahjong site, as xkime. The same day I started a blog in Spanish and English called Tonari no Riichi. The name stuck: xkime is still what a lot of players call me.

Tenhou became my training ground. I reached the Phoenix room, the site’s top table, and 7-dan, and in 2012 I made 9-dan on Janryumon, another Japanese online game. I like to say the road to 6-dan on Tenhou is simple and straightforward, and mahjong starts afterwards.

A book, and a lot of translating

In 2010 I released a Spanish riichi book for free, Guía de Profundización en Mahjong Básico. The Kindle edition followed in 2011, at 193 pages, and I drew the tile art myself.

In English I wrote for Osamuko.com from 2010 to 2017, including a “Tile Efficiency 101” series. I translated guides for ReachMahjong in 2011, subtitled an episode of TOHAI in English in 2015, and worked on Tenhou’s English translation. Much of it overlapped with my translation degree (2012–2015).

Amagasaki, 2011

My first trip to Japan was in 2011: about three months, staying in Amagasaki, just outside Osaka. The first parlor I ever played in was Marchao in Umeda. That trip is also when I met Makoto Fukuchi, whom I call my Japanese father.

Online and offline mahjong are different games, and a Japanese parlor is where that becomes obvious. On Tenhou the software counts the points and simply won’t let you win on a tile you’re not allowed to win on. At a real table you track all of that yourself, at speed, with three people watching your hands.

Osaka, 2016

From August 2015 to August 2016 I taught Japanese at the same University of Buenos Aires language center where I’d studied it. Then, in 2016, I moved to Osaka.

The first jobs were part-time. Later that year I started working as a member at a mahjong parlor in Osaka. If you’ve never been inside a Japanese parlor, a member is staff who also sits in when a table is short a player, which means you play a lot of hands with a lot of different people.

Turning pro in 2017

In February 2017 I played Tenhou’s first international exchange tournament in Tokyo. The same year I became a professional with the Japan Professional Mahjong Association (NPM), in its 16th intake.

At the Kansai Champion Road in April 2017 I lost in the semifinal. The report introduced me as the first Argentine to play competitive mahjong as a pro, and called me a formidable rookie “armed with strategy and will” (知略と意志を携えた恐るべき新人). I’ll happily take the description.

That year I also played NPM’s 16th Rookie of the Year tournament. I topped my semifinal table and reached the final, my first broadcast final, where I finished fourth.

The day job, briefly

Most pros in Japan have a day job, and so do I. In April 2017 I started in customer support at ZenMarket, a cross-border e-commerce service, and ended up directing its multilingual marketing across twelve markets. In 2021 I moved into frontend engineering, and since November 2021 I’ve been at Vercel, where I lead customer success for Asia Pacific and Japan and am interim country manager for Japan. The rest is on the about page.

The mahjong has had to fit around all of it, and it has.

Teaching, translating, broadcasting

Most of what I do in mahjong now sits between Japan and everyone else. In a 2018 interview I said I had three personas: a South American for the Spanish-speaking world, a pro for Japan, and a pro for the English-speaking world. It’s still a fair summary.

I assist Kosho Tsuchida at his mahjong class at the RIHGA Royal Hotel Osaka. In 2020 I produced and hosted an online lecture by him for Riichi Nomi, the riichi club in New York, with live English translation. I referee tournaments in Kansai, and I’ve helped at a mahjong class for kids. I also coach in English, Spanish and Japanese.

In October 2023 I went back to Buenos Aires as a guest of the Argentine mahjong club, for a tournament and a Q&A. It’s a long way from a rule sheet for a circle of friends to being invited back as a guest.

Since July 2024, pro Kei Nakabayashi and I have been streaming M.League, Japan’s professional team league, live in English on his YouTube channel. He commentates, and I interpret into English as he speaks. We met at a birthday party in Osaka. It’s an independent project, not an official M.League one, and it’s the most direct version of what I’ve been doing since the forum thread: taking the Japanese game to people who don’t read Japanese.

In 2025, on Tsuchida’s recommendation, I played a special match with four M.League players under his “Mugen Rule”. The same year I played for Argentina at the World Riichi Championship in Tokyo.

What I’m working toward

My priorities are the ones I teach: enjoy it first, improve second, win third. Beyond my own results, I’d like to help build a global mahjong organization, for competition and for friendship between players in different countries.

If you want to learn the game in English, npmahjong.com has free guides and tools. My Japanese-language site is nikorasu.pro, the broadcasts and interviews are on the speaking page, and what the table has taught me about work is in a separate article.

The goal I’m working toward is a seat in M.League.