“Ojisan trading card game” brings smiles to young and old in Fukuoka town.

Japan is a paradise for collectible trading card game fans. Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! are the evergreen-hit genre giants, and there are tons of other card games with their own dedicated fan bases too.

For example, in the town of Kawara, Fukuoka Prefecture, the big new game is Saido Otoko Cards, or, as it’s also known, the Ojisan Trading Card game. And what are “ojisan?”

Middle-aged men.

▼ A video report showing a group of kids playing the middle-aged man trading card game

Much like many other trading card games, the goal is to use your character’s powers, elemental affinities, and other abilities to defeat your opponents’ squad. The difference, though, is that instead of building your team from a pool of monsters or magicians, each card in your deck bears the image of a dude who’s middle-aged or older, such as a farmer or a soba noodle chef. Then there’s the biggest twist: these aren’t fictional characters, but actual men who live or work in Kawara’s Saido neighborhood, hence the game’s name of Saido Otoko (“Saido Men”) Cards.

The idea to swap real-world middle-aged men in for Pokémon came from the Saido Community Council, with director Eri Miyahara spearheading design, as part of an effort to foster a friendly sense of connectiveness and local pride. Within the game, the character Firewall might unleash his Perfect Fire power, but his real-life version, 74-year-old retired fire chief Honda-san, still lives in the community, as does character Soba Master’s inspiration, 81-year-old Takeshita-san, who teaches noodle-making lessons to pass on his skills to the town’s next generations. Thanks to the game’s popularity, neighbors who might have been strangers to the kids before are now nearby heroes, as shown in the video below where an elementary school student proudly shows off her autographed card of character All Arounder, signed by 68-year-old retired police officer Fujii-san, who now does a variety of volunteer activities such as providing transportation for local seniors who are unable to drive themselves.

Since launching the middle-aged man trading card game, the community center says its seen a surge in the number of kids participating in local volunteer projects, with roughly twice as many of them showing up as they were used to and many citing that part of their motivation was a chance to work alongside the people they knew from the card game.

Currently the completed set consists of about 40 different cards, all hand-cut by staff members of the Saido Community Center, which produces 50 a day. They can be purchased from the candy shop inside the center (shown in the photo above), with packs of three costing just 100 yen (US$0.70) and packs of six, which include one guaranteed prism-finish card, going for 500 yen.

Related: Saido Community Center
Source: FNN Prime Online via Livedoor News via Otakomu, Daily Pandaman
Top image: Pakutaso (edited by SoraNews24)
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