Japanese Culture
Every MyRin game carries a Japanese name. What the kanji mean, from Kai-awase shell matching and sangaku temple tablets to the nurikabe wall spirit of folklore.
Open MyRin and you will notice that the games do not have names like "Puzzle 7" or "Brain Game Pro". They are called Kai-awase, Taiko, Anzan, Kamon, Nurikabe. Each name is a small piece of Japanese culture, and many of them are older than the games they now describe.
Here is what every name means, grouped by the kind of game it belongs to. In a few cases the website and the app use different names for the same game. Where that happens, both are given.
Kai-awase (貝合わせ), Memory Match. Kai-awase means "shell matching". In the Heian period, a thousand years ago, aristocrats played it with clam shells whose two halves were painted with matching scenes. Because each half only fits its original partner, clam shells became a symbol of a faithful couple. The website also uses 神経衰弱 (shinkei suijaku), the everyday Japanese name for the card game Concentration. It literally means "nervous exhaustion", which says something about how the game feels after a few rounds.
Pairs (裏返し, uragaeshi), Flip Match. Uragaeshi means "turning over", which is exactly what you do with every card.
Taiko (太鼓), Simon Says. Taiko are the large Japanese drums played in festivals and ensembles. Drummers learn long rhythmic sequences by heart, and the game asks you to do the same with a growing sequence of colours.
Sangaku (算額). Sangaku were wooden tablets hung in Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples during the Edo period, each showing a geometry problem, often beautifully painted. People offered them as thanks, or to challenge other mathematicians. The word combines "calculation" and "framed tablet".
Anzan (暗算), Arithmetic Blitz. Anzan means "mental calculation". In Japan it also refers to the technique abacus students learn of calculating with an imagined abacus. The website uses 速算 (sokusan), "quick calculation".
Shuzan (珠算). Shuzan is calculation with the soroban, the Japanese abacus. The character 珠 means "bead". In the game, equations fall from the top of the screen, hence the website's second label, 落下 (rakka), "falling".
Scales (天秤, tenbin), Balance Scale. Tenbin is the traditional two-pan balance used by merchants to weigh silver and goods.
Sequence (数列, sūretsu). Simply "number sequence", the mathematical term.
Kakuro (加算). The name comes from a blend of 加算 (kasan, "addition") and the English word "cross", because it works like a crossword built from sums.
Sudoku (数独). Sudoku is a shortened form of a phrase meaning "the digits must remain single". The puzzle was first published in the United States as Number Place, but the Japanese publisher Nikoli popularised it in the 1980s and gave it the name the world now uses.
Hashi (橋). Hashi means "bridge", short for hashiwokakero, "build bridges!". You connect islands with bridges, and the number on each island tells you how many it needs.
Nurikabe (塗壁). Nurikabe is a creature from Japanese folklore: an invisible wall that blocks travellers on the road at night. The puzzle borrows the name because you build a single connected wall, the black "river", between numbered islands.
Nine (九格). The characters mean "nine" and "grid", the same 格 found in 格子 (kōshi), a lattice. The game clears a 3 by 3 section of nine cells once it is filled.
Ippitsugaki (一筆書き), One Line. "Written in one stroke": tracing a figure without lifting the brush. It is a familiar children's puzzle in Japan, and it echoes the ensō, the Zen circle drawn in a single movement.
Nexus (路線, rosen). Rosen means a route or line, as in a bus or train line. You draw routes between matching dots without letting them cross.
Infinity Loop (回路, kairo). Kairo means "circuit", which is what you are completing as you rotate the pieces until power reaches every lamp.
Hanoi (河内). The Tower of Hanoi is named after the Vietnamese city, which in kanji is written 河内, "within the river".
2048 (合成, gōsei). Gōsei means "combining" or "synthesis", as tiles merge into larger ones.
Rotate (回転, kaiten), Mental Rotation. Kaiten simply means "rotation". It is the same word you see at a kaiten-zushi, a conveyor-belt sushi restaurant.
Hue (色分け, iro-wake). "Sorting by colour". You move balls between tubes until each holds one colour.
Temari (手毬). Temari are traditional balls wrapped in coloured thread and embroidered with intricate geometric patterns. They began as toys and became a craft and a common gift. In the game, you sort temari balls into bamboo tubes.
Kamon (家紋). Kamon are Japanese family crests: circles, flowers, leaves and geometric shapes that identified a family on clothing, banners and roof tiles. The game asks you to sort crests onto lacquer stands, one design per stand.
Reflex (反応速度, hannō sokudo), Reaction Speed. Hannō sokudo is the plain term for reaction speed.
Iroyomi (色読み). "Colour reading". It is the Stroop task, where you name the ink colour of a word rather than the word itself. Our article on the Stroop effect explains why that is so hard.
Hanafuda (花札). "Flower cards", the traditional Japanese card deck of twelve suits, one for each month, each illustrated with a flower or plant. The website labels the game 分類 (bunrui), "classification", because you sort cards into categories at speed. See our guide to Koi-Koi, the best-known hanafuda game.
Karuta (歌留多). Karuta comes from the Portuguese word carta, "card", brought to Japan in the sixteenth century. The kanji were chosen for their sound. The best-known form uses the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu, a classic anthology of one hundred poems. Players hear the opening of a poem and race to grab the card with its ending. Our article on competitive karuta covers the sport.
Kana Scout (目探し). The website label means roughly "eye search". The game shows a grid of near-identical katakana and asks you to find the odd one. See the Kana Scout guide.
Monyo (文様, mon'yō). Mon'yō are traditional patterns and motifs: waves, hemp leaves, tortoise-shell hexagons and many more, used on textiles and lacquerware. The game asks you to recognise them after rotations and reflections.
Bricks (煉瓦, renga). Renga means "brick". You place block shapes to complete rows and columns.
Jumble (言葉, kotoba), Word Scramble. Kotoba means "word" or "language". You rebuild a hidden word from its scrambled letters.
Names shape how a game feels. "Memory Match" describes a mechanic. "Kai-awase" connects the same mechanic to a thousand years of people sitting together, turning over painted shells and trying to remember where the other half was. That sense of continuity is part of what MyRin is trying to offer: not just exercise for the mind, but a small daily ritual with roots.
If you would like to go further into the history, our free ebook The Mind Games of Japan covers many of these traditions in depth.