P.S. Stick around to the end of this post, where you can win a sexy green USB man.

I bet a lot of you know all about “rock, paper, scissors,” the other way that Japanese people make decisions, but did you know about amidakuji? When you need to assign people or things to an equal number of outcomes, amidakuji is the best way to do it… plus, it kind of reminds me of all those pipes mario smokes has to walk through.

If you look at the info-graphic above (from Wikipedia), you probably should be able to understand how it works. The important thing is that there are an equal number of outcomes as there are things to make decisions on. If you do this, then everything works out in the end, every time (i.e. no one outcome will be chosen twice!).

Amidakuji is used for all kinds of things. I’ve experienced it with distributing prizes (this is how I think Christmas exchanges should happen), distributing chores to do (who has to clean the bathroom this week?), and choosing partners / opponents in various games and activities. It’s actually incredibly useful if you use it in the right situations.

Speaking of using it in the right situation, remember that Flutterscape contest from a few weeks ago? I used amidakuji to figure out which of the six finalists would win the prize. Congrats to the winners!

[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEbb88lwgz8']

For those of you who didn’t win don’t cry for too long, because Flutterscape giveaway two out of three is upon us, and I’m giving away two “Midori Otoko.” These “green guys” are actually 2GB USB sticks. When you pop off their heads, you can access their USB dongle, plug it in, and make use of their binary knowledge. They also bend around, which means you can make them do Yoga, apparently.

Midori Otoko Rules

1. Make sure you have a Twitter account (and follow @tofugu and @flutterscape if you haven’t already!)
2. Write an awesome haiku about Flutterscape on Twitter (don’t know what Flutterscape does?). Haikus are 5-7-5 syllables.
3. Make sure you include the #flutterscape AND #haiku hashtags. If you don’t, I won’t be able to find your tweet, because I’m going to use this search on Twitter.
4. Optional: Post your haiku in the comments of this post, too, because we all want to read it.

I’m going to choose the winner sometime soon (Maybe a week? Maybe two?) so get your tweets up there. You can tweet multiple times, but just be careful not to tweet too much, otherwise your overwhelming number of tweets may take away from the punch of your winning tweet. I’ll pick two of my favorites and then send you a direct message if you won (so you should make sure to follow @tofugu on Twitter!)

[Midori Otoko on Flutterscape]

P.S. Stay inspired to study Japanese with the (free) TextFugu Inspirational E-mail List.