Back home in the UK, trivia nights are ubiquitous. No matter which city, town or village you go to, chances are that the local pub will be hosting a quiz night at least once a month – and they’re pretty well-attended! The same can not be said for Japan, especially in Nagoya. In the whole city of Nagoya, Japan’s fourth-largest city, there are only three trivia nights… and two are run by Small World!
The other trivia night is run by Nagoya’s OG quiz master, Mick, at The Elephant’s Nest in Fushimi. He’s been doing it a lot longer than me and his quiz – dare I say it – is much truer to the real thing that you’d get back home in the UK. His questions are original, creative, and much more of a challenge. If you’re a fan of the quiz nights that we do at Shooters and The Rock, you’ll love Mick’s. I strongly encourage you to check them out if you get a chance.
Jason is another OG quiz master who hasn’t had so much experience hosting quiz nights in Japan, but I believe that he used to write questions for his university quiz team back in the USA, and he throws a round or two my way sometimes, purely because his love for trivia is just that profound, and I am consistently impressed by how creative and interesting they are.
We’re lucky enough to have Mick and Jason collaborating with us on some events, and this Sunday was their Trivia Night @ The Rock debut. This meant that I got the opportunity to participate (which I rarely do) and thoroughly enjoyed myself. I think my favourite round was the Jukebox round, which saw teams choosing their favourite genres to identify songs from. This cleverly handed over some of the control to the teams, which added a whole new level of dynamism to the game. I’m definitely stealing that for a future quiz.
Another round of good fortune came when Willow, a staff member from Shooters brought over several boxes of goodies from London Cupcakes! Everyone got some freebies! And cupcakes! What a great day.
Anyway, the point of all this is just to say thank you to the amazing people within the community that help make our events so fantastic. It can be difficult to see where all of the components that make an event come from when you’re a participant, and I just want to highlight the collaborative effort that goes into building a community like Small World, and the events that we host.
Thank you to Mick and Jason for their hard work on what might be our most complex and time-consuming event to prepare. Their input takes some of the pressure off my shoulders and allows us to host two of the only three quiz nights in the city on a regular basis.
– Matthew
