The Joy of Nazotoki Puzzle Games: Japanese Riddles on Trains ひとつなぎの謎 電車の謎解きゲーム

The Joy of Nazotoki Games- an introduction to a puzzle-solving riddle game, using Japanese train networks.

In this video I will introduce train-based Nazotoki Games, which have become quite popular in Japan recently, and are being run by at least 10 train companies and lines in the Kansai area.

If you know what escape rooms are, that will help. Nazotoki Games on the trains will take you on an unpredictable tour around the Kansai train networks, solving puzzles by various means to reveal the next station to travel to.

They have been used as a way to encourage use of train networks, visit less famous places, boost local economies, and just get people out of the house post-Covid. They are available for limited periods for a reasonable cost, and come with a one-day pass and a plastic file of mysterious books and items with which to solve a mystery.

If you want to try out some example puzzles, look on each company’s Nazotoki Game website, accessible from this link: https://nazotoki-zepets.com/7piece-nazo-2023/

If you want to leave a comment, please go ahead – but keep it positive, tell me an movie you love too, I’m interested to hear more!

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Hi everyone, David here! Welcome back to the channel, thanks for coming back for another video or welcome if it’s your first one. Thanks for coming, how are you doing? Are you doing OK? It’s the start of February, everyone’s getting sick.

I was sick a few weeks ago, I lost my voice. I’m hopefully back to normal now. I’m a little bit croaky and dry but anyway, it’s a horrible rainy day in Osaka, very cold, but that’s kind of the same as February in England

Anyway, so that’s fairly comfortable for me. So I thought I’d do one of my sitting-down-in-my-room videos so I don’t have to go outside. I got plenty of steps yesterday, so I need to relax a bit. I’m going to talk about that in a moment,

Because that’s connected to today’s topic. Today I want to talk about one of the things that I’ve become interested in during the last 2 or 3 years, which is called a Nazo-toki game. Nazo-toki translates to “riddle solving” or “puzzle solving” in Japanese. Most people watching

This are probably familiar with an escape room, it’s kind of … well it’s a room you go inside. You’re sealed in with your friends or sometimes total strangers. And you’ve got a time limit to solve some puzzle, using things around the room and various challenges, mental agility tasks. And then if

You succeed, you can get out before the time limit and you’ve won. I’m not really– I don’t know why but I’ve not really been that interested in it, maybe because it’s in Japan and I don’t think my Japanese is that

High enough level to do this easily. I don’t want the time pressure, I guess, and I got traumatized by watching The Crystal Maze when I was a kid. I don’t know if anyone knows that, you’re probably too young. Yeah so Nazo-Toki games,

They have recently become a bit more popular on the trains. So various train companies have been running these Nazo-toki game campaigns once a year or so. I started doing my first one I think in 2020, just before Corona just

Got out of control or after it had gone down a bit and was coming back. Since then it seems to have blossomed into quite a little industry. There’s a couple of companies vying for territory. There’s even one on the Shinkansen at the

Moment which looks good, but I’m I’m not going to pay for Shinkansen to get to Fukuoka just to play it. Yeah I know, maybe if I have a more bit more budget, if you keep subscribing to this channel then hopefully I can get enough money

To give it a try, I’ll show you the way! So at the moment there’s a big campaign – I’ve made a video recently about how many train companies there are in Osaka. There’s I think at least 9 or 10, and one puzzle company has collaborated with seven of them fairly recently. They’ve made

Individual games for each of them, so I’ve been going through checking off all the puzzle games. There’s another company been that has been doing the Osaka Metro games. They’ve been doing them every couple of years. In fact that was the first one I did, the Osaka Metro one. And they make escape rooms

As well in… somewhere in Americamura I think, in Shinsaibashi. So I’m going to talk about that today. I’m going to show you what they are and how you can do it, and what kind of puzzles there are, what you can win if you’re lucky and

You’ve got enough free time to do too much of it. So please like this video, I would appreciate that a lot. Please subscribe to the channel if you haven’t already Apparently 90% of the people watching my channel are not

Subscribed, so please don’t be one of the 10% be one of the 90. No that’s the wrong way around, isn’t it? Be one of the 10%, be the elites on this channel, leave a comment as well. I’m curious to know if there

Are these sorts of games in your country too, even if you’re in England, because I’ve been away for a while, so I don’t know what the latest trends are. And also share this channel if you know any friends who are interested in trains, puzzles

Or all of the above, then let them know about me, I’d appreciate that! So let’s get into it, I’m going to show you one today. This is the– if you can read that kanji, this is the Nankai line. Nankai is the line that goes from

Namba, down south to Wakayama and Kansai Airport. And by the way, don’t worry, there is a Nankai game running at the moment but this is the last season’s one. So no spoilers here! And there’s no way you can do this now. So yeah, no spoilers!

I’m not going to show you the puzzles for a current game, so don’t worry. So you buy this file pack. This file pack, they’ve gone up recently but at the moment they’re about 2,500 Yen, which is fairly reasonable, because it’s whole day of entertainment,

Quite a long day sometimes ! And you also get a one-day pass included. This is an original design one as well, if you’re a collector of that sort of thing. It’s an original design because you sometimes need this for the puzzles. So you might need to combine it with something in the

Puzzle book, or all the other bits you’ve got, to reveal some information. So keep an eye on this! So that’s a one day pass, that’s… I mean that by itself would probably be about 1,000 yen or more, so the fact you’re getting this

And a whole day’s worth of games for 2,500 yen, it’s not too bad. So you get this kind of file bag, a kind of a plastic one with an uncomfortable handle. I’ll take all the stuff out first. And you might see various kind of interesting symbols around here. You’ve got a little

Projector there, you’ve got these funny holes as well, these little windows, other windows here. This means you can combine them with other things, other documents, and they might reveal some secret messages. So that’ll be very useful for your puzzle solving, so don’t forget about this.

And inside, what do we have? We’ve got an orientation sheet, so it just tells you what you need. And a lot of this game is run using Line If you don’t know what Line is, it’s probably the most popular communication app, like an SMS message-type app. It’s a bit like WhatsApp

If you’re into that. I like Line better than WhatsApp, because I like using the stickers you can get on there. It’s a bit more interesting. But using Line, you need this for inputting keywords to get information or scanning things sometimes. There was even one, I won’t say which,

But it’s got like a special AR camera thing, augmented reality. So you can take a picture of something, a sign they’ve put up in a special area, and it will come up with some puzzle or something … I forgot what it was now,

But some information to help you. So that’s just information for you. I’ve got some sticker sheet, which I’ve used so I don’t need that. You get coupons as well. On the way, it’s going to take most of the day so you’re going to have to

Eat at some point. Various cafes, restaurants, some shops as well, you can get discounts by using these coupons. For these coupons, you don’t know where they’re for. What you have to do, when you go to a new station —

Don’t know where you’re going to go ahead of time, so if they print the names on the coupons then you you’re going to know what’s coming up. So you type in a keyword into Line and it will tell you where you can use your coupons.

And you just tear one off and use it. So yeah, it’s very useful for skinflints like me who want to save some money. We’ve got some bits of paper as well. You often get little bits of paper that you’ve got to fold up or do things with. I’ve got some —

I mean this one’s got stickers stuck on it as well, to combine things. It’s covered in little marks and things that might be useful for you. You can see a little secret message that I revealed. Sometimes these are in the bag, sometimes you get them from little pass-code lockers dotted around the

The journey, so that’s quite exciting, I feel like a spy picking up things. Oh I didn’t actually say this — so a Nazo-toki game, basically you’re solving puzzles in order, station by station. This is the reason why you need a one-day pass.

You’re traveling a lot on whatever train line. So in this case I was traveling on the Nankai line. You don’t know where you’re going, but when you solve a puzzle you’ll find out where the next station is. So it’s kind of like

A magical mystery tour that you can take around and find new places to go, find out some history of the are that you might not have known already. And just experience a few new locations. They don’t tend to — I mean

There’s a mix of really out-of-the-way places that you never would have visited by yourself, and some quite famous spots as well. So yeah you can have a bit of variety too. What do I do with this thing? I think this is a good example actually.

I think this — it’s got a train on here, it looks like I stuck those on as well. This is a couple years ago now, so I can’t remember what I did. I think we were supposed to put this in here and run the train through the tunnel.

Oh have I done this the wrong way? Yeah I have… OK I should have practiced this! We run the train through the tunnel and then once it gets out of the tunnel then some mysterious phrase will appear

On there. I think that says “Crank up” “Crank up”, this is something they say, it’s like “That’s a wrap” in Japanese. This had a big story as well so you’ve got to follow the story, and this was something about movies. I can’t remember

What the story was, so you can kind of reveal words using these things. I’ll put that away. And the main thing you need is this very mysterious book. It has puzzles in it, it’s got a route map as well. What else? Did I stick that on?

I think I might have done. It’s covered in little marks as well, mysterious things, like you can see these tiny little letters as well. You wouldn’t notice them the first time, you’ve got to keep an eye on these things. For example, you’ve got your story page here.This is all in

Japanese as well so I don’t know what I did, I probably Google translated most of it. Our first puzzle was stopping trains. So if you use the traffic lights and you drew lines down, you would unre— unreveal? What do I mean?

Unveil the not very well-hidden “Namba” written on there. You can probably just about make out Namba, that means Namba was the first station to go to. And it also… there was another puzzle here this is kind of code breaking.

So if you notice this and the route map, the numbers on there are written in the same font and the same style. So that meant that these station numbers matched up with the station names, and the little numbers after it —

You can see big 03 and a little 4. That means you take the fourth character from station 3, if that makes sense, and that will come up … I don’t, I mean I can’t remember what the… Shin-Imamiya, I think it was? So that would be a “Ma” from that one.

And it gives you an example, you’ve got to work out what the rule is and then work out the next one to do. So this was giving me directions to a particular ticket gate in Namba station. So there we go, let me show you a few more puzzles.

I can show you — for example we went to a castle, was it Kishiwada Castle. And when you get there, you have to fill in some information from the surroundings. This was the location of some shrines or something like that.

So you put the stickers on there and then that helps you get through this puzzle as well. So there’s certain rules for traversing this little kind of maze, and then eventually you had to stick some stickers on it and change the routes

And then get another answer out. So there’s a lot of things like that, where you solve a puzzle and then you might have to go back and resolve it in a different way. So it’s kind of complex, I don’t really know how they make them up.

Also you get information about the local area too, opening times, prices, stuff like that, photos. Sometimes you get history, a little lesson as well. So it’s kind of a tourist-boosting thing. And they get games like this where you have to walk around shopping arcade and look

For things, signs around you in the correct order and that will spell out a message based on these little characters there. What else? Yeah I think that’s most of it. And then collecting information from around you and inputting it into

Certain puzzles – so you actually have to go there, you can’t just do all this at home. I think– this was a bit of a mess– I think I had to fill it all in and then put it all in reverse. and yeah it was … I don’t know.

You can see my Japanese writing is not very good. But yeah so basically the whole thing takes… well, now this is the thing. They say on the website that these take about 5 or 6 hours but those are lies!

I think I don’t know what kind of people can do it in that much time. It doesn’t include lunchtime either so, yeah whatever. But I’ve had them that have taken quite a long time, they’ve taken until dark as well. I said I was quite

Tired today from walking a lot and that was because I did one of these games yesterday, and I was walking unit late, let’s say. So I’m pretty exhausted! So yeah there we go, that’s the Nazo-toki games. Last year, I said that one of these puzzle companies is collaborating

With a lot of train networks. I didn’t realize immediately but all of these train networks also kind of collaborated on one big campaign. So basically if you finished all seven of the games, you’d be eligible for some route to win some items. Now last year was quite complicated,

Let me talk you through it. So first you’ve got your seven main train lines. I think this was — this is testing my memory now — it was Keihan line, Nankai line, Kintetsu, Sanyo Dentetsu in Hyogo, I’m going to forget some, aren’t I? Kita Osaka Kyuko line, which is like the

End of the Midosuji line. Oh and Hankyu and Hanshin, that was it. So if you finished all of those, each one you finish triggers an extra stage. So you can do that on a separate day, and it’s like a mini

Nazo-toki game that just takes place around one station. So you’ve got seven games and you’ve got seven extra stages, and if you complete all of the extra stages, then you’re eligible to unlock the big final stage, which was very difficult and

It took me forever to do it. But I did manage to do it a few days before the deadline. And I managed to win some stuff, so I’m going to show you what I got. I can’t remember which thing I got for which, but anyway I got something for

Passing all of the main games, and then I got something for the final stage I think. So one thing I got was this tote bag. This is the, what was it? Hitonazo … uhh … /?? Hitotsunagi no Nazo – I can’t read today – Project.

So this is the 7 companies project, I got a little tote bag, I got a bit schmutz on it there, so never mind. This is good, it’s got some nice pockets for your… I got my spare pens and then an eraser in there. This is good for your

Puzzle solving. And also I won this big binder as well, so like a clipboard, it’s useful to have a little clipboard to write on because you’re traveling around everywhere. So this has got all of the games that I solved. That’s the main logo, that’s the… what’s that? Kita-Osaka Kyuko

Nankai, Hankyu, Hanshin, what else? Kintetsu What’s that, Sanyo Dentetsu and Keihan. I think that’s all of them! So this company Flap Zero Alpha, they’re the ones that make the games. There is another company called SCRAP who make the Osaka Metro ones, that’s the first one

I tried actually, that was a while ago. I’ve got a congratulations letter. So thank you for doing everything. Of course I like a freebie but I can still complain about it – the only problem is that this is way too big,

This doesn’t fit inside the bag, so it’s not really that practical. So that’s a bit annoying, I haven’t really used this. I might use this for something one day. But I bought my own little mini clipboard from the 100 shop so that’s really useful for me. Yeah so there we go,

That’s a Nazo-toki game, I hope that was slightly interesting. I’m going to put a link in the bottom of the the description if you want to try out some games, if you want to try your Japanese skills. Basically it’s a

Link to the Nazo-toki projects page. And if you go on to one of the individual games then — each game has their own website — and they’ll have their practice puzzles too, and they’ve got hints as well if you want to. Yeah so

Don’t worry if you’re not very good at puzzles. For example if you get stuck on this one you can type in the hint number into Line and then it’ll give you a hint. And you can keep getting hints until eventually it says “OK well

Here’s the answer”. So don’t worry, you’re not going to get stuck. You might get annoyed, you might get tired, you might get a headache, you might get really hungry, you might get cold, you might get sore feet… and probably you’re going to

Get all of those things, but it is quite fun. I’m about to finish the 7 company project for this year. I’ve only got one more left to do and then I’ve got a final stage for that too. They’re not doing the extra

Stages this year, they’re just doing the the main 7 and then the final, that’s all. So I don’t really know what that’s going to be like, but wish me luck. Hopefully I can do it! Yeah that’s it really, if you’ve got any questions about

Nazo-toki games, how to buy them — well just go to the train station, look on the websites, they’ve got all the information there. But let me know if you’ve tried it, let me know if they’ve done anything in your country. I can’t really imagine them doing it this in England,

But I don’t know, maybe on the Underground, they could do it there. I don’t think many cities have got very good train networks, individual train networks, so I don’t know how that would work. But look out for it, maybe

There’s a puzzle game in a town near you. So let’s give it a try! Thanks for watching, like I said, like, subscribe, comment, share, all that stuff, that will help me out. I’m starting to get closer to 700 subscribers now so

That will that’s my next milestone. So please help me out! Thanks for watching, take care, be safe, and see you next time! Bye!