Shogi

Shogi, or “Japanese chess”, is a game with some similarities to western chess. The biggest difference, which completely changes the nature of the game, is that the pieces you capture from your opponent can be put back into play on your side, anywhere on the board. Other differences are that the board is larger 9x9, the pieces move differently, and each piece promotes differently. From what I understand, shogi games are a lot more “defensive” and tend to last much longer than chess games.

The game is played professionally in Japan, and for fans of manga and anime the first thing I must do is recommend Sangatsu no LionSangatsu no Lion which tells stories of such professional players, and the normal life around them.

https://www.crockford.com/shogi.html

Shogi is a great game, but it is virtually unknown outside of Japan. If you undertook the task of designing equipment for Shogi with the sole objective of discouraging Chess players from wanting to learn it, it would be hard to improve on the traditional Shogi equipment. It is played on an 9 by 9 uncheckered board with flat five-sided pieces. Each piece has a Kanji character written on it, often in a cursive script that even Japanese people have difficulty reading. A new player must learn to read several Kanji characters, right-side-up and up-side-down.