Shiritori

Shiritori is a Japanese verbal word game. The rule is to start with a word, say Shiritori, then take turns saying new words that start with the previous word’s ending syllable. So the next word after Shiritori would start with ‘ri’. If you say a word that ends in ‘n’ then you lose, because there are no words that start with that in Japanese (aside from some foreign African country names).

If playing for fun, then there’s no time limit, but I imagine according to the strict rules, you’re out if you don’t think of a word in time.

I remember playing this with Japanese friends while waiting in roller coaster lines at an amusement park. Tonight on

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HelloTalk, someone hosted a livestream to play the game with the people in chat.

It’s a great game for Japanese language learners, to exercise recalling words you know, as well as learn new words that others use.