Japanese and Dungeons and Dragons

I've always been interested in the Japanese culture ever since I traveled there as a child. They always had the best toys and the best cartoons. As I grew up my love for Japanese entertainment rekindled with anime, manga, and Godzilla. I was there buying Ranma 1/2 BHS tapes before being into anime was "cool."

As a table-top gamer Japan's RPGs always fascinated me (called table-talk role playing games, or ttrpg over there). I've always wanted to see their games with their own rules and see their versions of games like Dungeons and Dragons. When I met and GMed for a group of Japanese players I got a little peek into their world. Here are some of the things I noticed:

1. The Japanese players I met were very team-oriented. More so than the groups I gamed with at the time (really, it's no surprise.).
2. Their 3.5 D&D rulebooks are identical to ours. Same covers, art and everything. I was disappointed by this. I wanted to see manga art with Japanese sensibilities throughout the book. There was none.
3. Lots of barbarian love. The group consisted of Minni (halfling barbarian/fighter), Claud (human barbarian/cleric of Kord), Sakura (human barbarian/fighter), Vance (human mage), Ederic (human cleric). I asked about this and I was told that the barbarians were totally new to Japanese culture. It's just like our culture and how for a while EVERYTHING was a ninja.
4. The Japanese players did not role-play... Much.
5. Sakura blew my mind. I pictured everyone playing things straight out of Core with a very no-nonsense attitude about the game. Sakura was Sakura from Street Fighter. She dressed as a school girl and her weapons were battle yo-yo's that used the blade dagger stats. I love that kind of stuff (personally I would have requested she have a different name so that she was not a total copy of the character, just 99% of a copy).

I won't comment on my game other than my usual whining: My friend told me the evening before that I was GMing for them and that he wanted me to write my own game.. And that it had to involve saving his PC.. And only half the group could speak English.

In the end it was a LOT of fun and I was honored to run the game.

I even left them with a legacy: I gave the halfling ftr/brb a dagger that could be used in the shadow of the target to act as a Hold Monster spell (ripped from the Slayer's Shadow Snap spell). She later used it to save the group by stopping the bad guy and allowing the group to escape from a collapsing tunnel.

I found the website to the group: The A.D.D.A. Homepage

Since I can not speak nor read Japanese I had Google translate the site. It's pretty featureless but it has info on their campaigns. They play 3.5 ed on the Grayhawk world. There is a message board of some sort but I don't know how to access it.