Menko Rules

Ohtani-san says...

The rules of menko are quite simple and involves, for ease of writing, two ‘players’ with both placing their chosen menko on the ground and trying to flip the opponent’s menko by slamming it with a heavier or “slammer” menko.  If you flip one of your foe’s cards you get to claim it and if he flips yours – the same applies.  It’s actually a similar concept to the game of marbles and almost exactly like the POG craze in recent times.  There are a couple of variations of menko rules that were also equally as popular and less vicious.  "Gu-choki-pa” marks on the back of the menko are played as rock-scissors-paper.  Kids took out one of their menko to compare with their opponent's simultaneously following a given signal.  If they won, they take home the opposing menko.  Playing with "Fighting Numbers" is largely the same; trying to outnumber your opponent's menko on certain digits.  For example, one player might have a Fighting Number of 58786 on his particular menko and the other might have 777596587 on his.  If they were dueling with the last digit, then the boy with the 7 as his last digit would win and again get the other boy’s menko.  There were many more ways to play with Fighting Numbers, but this is one example.  The last common way to play with menko was to stand them up against each other so they'd lean on each other without falling.  Then you would tap the surface they were on trying to make one of the menko topple over onto the other one.