Ruling — Let's Go! To Japan

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Let's Go! To Japanbg-368173-en-1e

The game consists of 13 rounds.[1] The round order is as follows:

1. Draw Cards: At the beginning of each round, players draw Activity cards simultaneously to their hand as indicated by the Round Tracker token on the Round Tracker Board.[2]

* The icon indicates if players draw 1 card from the Tokyo deck and 1 card from the Kyoto deck, or 2 cards from each deck.[2]

* At the beginning of round 13, players draw their choice of 1 card from either the Tokyo or Kyoto deck, and then draw the 1 card remaining on their player board.[2]

* A player may discard a Research token to the supply to draw 3 cards in any combination from the Tokyo and Kyoto decks, but must immediately discard any 3 cards to the face-up discard pile.[2]

2. Play Cards: Each round, players play either 1 or 2 Activity cards simultaneously to their itinerary, as indicated by the text on the Round Tracker Board.[3]

* Players add cards to their itinerary by placing them in a column below one of the days, Monday to Saturday, on their player board.[4]

* Each day can have a maximum of 3 cards in its column.[4]

* When adding a card to a day that already has 1 card, the player decides whether to tuck it underneath (at the top of the column) or at the bottom (replacing the 'Highlight of the Day').[4]

* When adding a card to a day that already has 2 cards, the player may place the card in between the 2 cards.[4]

* A player may "go for a walk" by discarding 1 card from their hand to the face-up discard pile, taking the top face-down card from either the Tokyo or Kyoto deck (without looking at it), and placing it in their itinerary; the player also takes 1 Research token from the supply.[5]

3. Day Bonuses: Whenever a player places a third Activity card in a day's column, they check for bonuses by counting the total number of icons in the upper section of the 3 cards that match the Favorable Condition token placed for that day during setup.[6] Based on matches, the player chooses 1 available bonus: move the Mood Tracker token 1 space right, take 2 Research tokens, take 1 Wild token, take 1 Luxury Train token, or go on an Extra Walk (adding a face-down card to that day without taking a Research token).[6]

4. Pass Cards: At the end of the round, players pass cards.[2]

* For rounds 1 to 7, players place cards face-down on the indicated space in the upper right corner of the player board of the player on their left.[2]

* Beginning in round 8, players pass cards to the player on their right.[2]

* At the end of every round, players should have no cards left in their hand.[2]

5. Final Round: Players ultimately go on their planned trip, activating each of their cards in order along the way.[1]

* The tokens on the player board (Experience and Mood) do not move until the player goes on their trip in the final round.[3]

* If a "Walk" card was left face-down, the player reveals it and decides whether to play/activate it face-up or leave it face-down.[5]

[1] RULEBOOK Let's Go! To Japan — Rulebook · p.2 · overview · components · setup

[2] RULEBOOK Let's Go! To Japan — Rulebook · p.5 · round order · 1. draw cards · research tokens

[3] RULEBOOK Let's Go! To Japan — Rulebook · p.5 · 2. play cards

[4] RULEBOOK Let's Go! To Japan — Rulebook · p.6 · card placement

[5] RULEBOOK Let's Go! To Japan — Rulebook · p.7 · 2. play cards (continued) · going for a walk

[6] RULEBOOK Let's Go! To Japan — Rulebook · p.7 · 2a. day bonuses

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
corpus profile: live,vps
answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only): gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
timings: search 79 ms · ask 5215 ms · total 5296 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 5296 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 5, "score": 0.048172, "snippet": "Each round, players will play either 1 or 2 Activity cards simultaneously to their itinerary, as indicated by the text on the Round Tracker Board. The upper section of each card shows which of the player's 5 Experience tokens will move forward on the Experience Track on their player board, and/or wh", "headingPath": "2. play cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 489}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.047643, "snippet": "Draw Cards | 2. Play Cards 2a. Day Bonuses | 3. End of Round At the beginning of each round, players will draw Activity cards simultaneously to their hand as indicated by where the Round Tracker token is on the Round Tracker Board. This icon means players should draw 1 card from the Tokyo deck and 1", "headingPath": "round order · 1. draw cards · research tokens", "sharpsignalDocId": 489}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.047619, "snippet": "When playing cards, players should consider maximizing points by: y Placing cards in the day in which the Favorable Condition token on their player board matches the most icons in the upper section of the card, since that will earn them bonuses. (See next column.) y Placing Tokyo cards adjacent to o", "headingPath": "2. play cards (continued) · going for a walk", "sharpsignalDocId": 489}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.046432, "snippet": "In the Solo mode you are competing against a travel agent to plan the best trip to Japan. Set up the game as normal for a 2-player game, except the travel agent's Experience Track tokens all start on the '2' space on their Experience Track. When you pass cards to the travel agent, immediately place ", "headingPath": "solo rules · The game plays as normal with a few exceptions: · scoring · adjusting the difficulty", "sharpsignalDocId": 489}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.045002, "snippet": "One player randomly places each of their 6 Favorable Condition tokens in the circular spot corresponding to one of the 6 days (Monday to Saturday) at the bottom of their player board. All other players place their own Favorable Condition tokens on their player boards matching the exact order of that", "headingPath": "setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 489}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.044854, "snippet": "1 let’s go! to japan | a game by josh wood y Vacation planning tips y Local secrets y Playtime: 45 minutes y Player count: 1 t o 4 y Ages: 10+ y Simultaneous play travel guide to japan", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 489}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Throughout the game, players will add Activity cards to their itinerary by placing them in a column below one of the days, Monday to Saturday, on their player board. Each day can have a maximum of 3 cards in its column. (Extra Walk cards, which are explained on page 8, are the exception.) The cards ", "headingPath": "card placement", "sharpsignalDocId": 489}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "At this point, players activate the cards in their itinerary in order from Monday to Saturday, starting with the card at the top of the column for Monday and going downward in that column so that the upper section of each card is activated. This is followed by the activation of the visible 'Highligh", "headingPath": "final round: going on a trip! · example", "sharpsignalDocId": 489}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "overview · components · setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 489}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "round order · 1. draw cards · research tokens", "sharpsignalDocId": 489}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "2. play cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 489}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "card placement", "sharpsignalDocId": 489}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "2. play cards (continued) · going for a walk", "sharpsignalDocId": 489}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "2a. day bonuses", "sharpsignalDocId": 489}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 489 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 489 boosted
answered-before recall: this ruling was answered, so past rulings were not offered
similarity threshold in force: 0.55 (rulesage.answered-before.similarity-threshold; the exact-question tier is not gated by it)
answer fence: passed — letter density 0.92077 of 2398 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 15, 2026 10:06

retrieval — what the passage search returned

what this block IS: the PASSAGE SEARCH's own results — the same search that fills this page's closest-passages list — and NOT the passages the answerer read. Answering runs its OWN retrieval: a far wider candidate pool, re-ranked down to a final handful, plus floors this search never applies — the base rulebook, surviving errata corrections, and one slot per book on a multi-book read. Each of those armed only if THIS ask sent what it needs: the boost block names the ids it forwarded, and the scope line names the books it read. A document the answer CITES that no row here names is therefore EXPECTED, not a defect: two searches, two candidate pools, two orders. The answerer's own final rows are shown in their own block below, beside these and never mixed into them.

score = the fused retrieval score (reciprocal-rank fusion over the search arms) — NOT a cosine similarity. This ruling ran the THREE-ARM fuse (full-text + vector + the doc-priority boost arm, which carried the base rulebook and/or the errata corrections this query matched), whose arithmetic ceiling is 0.04918 — all three arms ranking the same chunk #1 (ceiling = arms/(k+1) at k=60). The measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 was measured on TWO-arm asks and does not bound this one: its high end is the two-arm ceiling, and a third arm has room above it. A chunk only one arm ranked highly lands near 0.016 (that one arm's #1 vote), so 0.03 here is an excellent hit, not a 3% match.

per-arm ranks (the rank each search arm gave a chunk): NOT DISCLOSED by the gateway. Fusion happens gateway-side and only the FUSED score crosses the wire, so rulesage cannot show them without a gateway change. The rank column below is the FUSED rank (position in the returned list), which is real.

token count per chunk: NOT DISCLOSED — chunk token counts are not reported on the ask path. The character counts below are of the bounded snippet/quote rulesage actually received — a real measurement of what we hold, never an estimate of the chunk.

fused rank	document	heading	page	fused RRF score	snippet chars
#1	RULEBOOK Let's Go! To Japan — Rulebook (corpus doc 489)	2. play cards	p.5	0.048172 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#2	RULEBOOK Let's Go! To Japan — Rulebook (corpus doc 489)	round order · 1. draw cards · research tokens	p.5	0.047643 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#3	RULEBOOK Let's Go! To Japan — Rulebook (corpus doc 489)	2. play cards (continued) · going for a walk	p.7	0.047619 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#4	RULEBOOK Let's Go! To Japan — Rulebook (corpus doc 489)	solo rules · The game plays as normal with a few exceptions: · scoring · adjusting the difficulty	p.16	0.046432 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#5	RULEBOOK Let's Go! To Japan — Rulebook (corpus doc 489)	setup	p.3	0.045002 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#6	RULEBOOK Let's Go! To Japan — Rulebook (corpus doc 489)		p.1	0.044854 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	184
#7	RULEBOOK Let's Go! To Japan — Rulebook (corpus doc 489)	card placement	p.6	0.032258 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#8	RULEBOOK Let's Go! To Japan — Rulebook (corpus doc 489)	final round: going on a trip! · example	p.9	0.029412 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300

what the answerer read — the passages it actually had in front of it

what this block IS: the passages the ANSWERING read put in front of the answerer, in the order it read them — the other half of the two reads described above, and the one that decides what the answer could possibly say. Each row names the book it came from and where in that book it sits, what it scored when the search arms were fused, which arm carried it there, and whether the re-ranker chose it or a floor guaranteed it a slot. A row here that no passage-search row names is EXPECTED: a far wider pool, re-ranked, with floors the passage search never applies.

candidate pool: the answering read scored 23 passages, out of a ceiling of 80 set gateway-side. Both figures are reported by the gateway for THIS ask — measurements of what actually happened, not constants read out of anyone's source and printed here on faith.

floors armed for this ask: the base rulebook — armed · surviving errata corrections — not armed · one slot per book on a multi-book read — not armed. Every floor is stated on every ask, armed or not, so a floor that did not apply here is never mistaken for one this app does not know about.

arms fused for this ask: vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm. Stated separately from the rows because an arm that ran and carried nothing is a different fact from an arm that never ran.

read at	document	heading	page	fused rank	fused RRF score	carried by	how it got its slot
#1	RULEBOOK Let's Go! To Japan — Rulebook (corpus doc 489)	2. play cards	p.5	#1	0.048172 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#2	RULEBOOK Let's Go! To Japan — Rulebook (corpus doc 489)	setup	p.3	#5	0.045002 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#3	RULEBOOK Let's Go! To Japan — Rulebook (corpus doc 489)	round order · 1. draw cards · research tokens	p.5	#2	0.047643 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK Let's Go! To Japan — Rulebook (corpus doc 489)	2a. day bonuses	p.7	#14	0.014493 (below 0.016, the low end of the measured band — a weak fuse (that band was taken on two-arm asks; only its low end, one arm's #1 vote, carries over to a 3-arm one))	vector	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Let's Go! To Japan — Rulebook (corpus doc 489)	overview · components · setup	p.2	#15	0.014286 (below 0.016, the low end of the measured band — a weak fuse (that band was taken on two-arm asks; only its low end, one arm's #1 vote, carries over to a 3-arm one))	vector	the re-ranker chose it
#6	RULEBOOK Let's Go! To Japan — Rulebook (corpus doc 489)	card placement	p.6	#7	0.032258 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK Let's Go! To Japan — Rulebook (corpus doc 489)	2. play cards (continued) · going for a walk	p.7	#3	0.047619 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK Let's Go! To Japan — Rulebook (corpus doc 489)	solo rules · The game plays as normal with a few exceptions: · scoring · adjusting the difficulty	p.16	#4	0.046432 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Let's Go! To Japan — Rulebook (corpus doc 489)	overview · components · setup	p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Let's Go! To Japan — Rulebook (corpus doc 489)	round order · 1. draw cards · research tokens	p.5	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Let's Go! To Japan — Rulebook (corpus doc 489)	2. play cards	p.5	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Let's Go! To Japan — Rulebook (corpus doc 489)	card placement	p.6	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Let's Go! To Japan — Rulebook (corpus doc 489)	2. play cards (continued) · going for a walk	p.7	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Let's Go! To Japan — Rulebook (corpus doc 489)	2a. day bonuses	p.7	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 79 ms · first delta 1681 ms · total 5296 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 0 ms · retrieval 79 ms · ask 5215 ms · gateway work 5296 ms · total 5296 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2950
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 739
tok/sec: 206.4 tok/sec — 739 output tokens in 3.580 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 56s ago)
stream path: streamed — the gateway pushed at least one accumulated draft
watchdog: first-token watchdog: 30s per arming window (rulesage.table.first-token-watchdog-seconds), re-armed once by the passages frame — so the worst case before a reader falls back to polling is 60s. Whether it actually fired is a BROWSER-side decision that never reaches the server, so it is not recorded here. The stream path above is the server's half of that story: whether a delta was emitted at all.
num_ctx · think posture: both are the CHILD's settings, not rulesage's, and no ask reply carries them — an answer never states which context window or think posture produced it. The live-seat line above reads them from the running child instead, where the gateway can answer for itself; it describes the child NOW, not this ask.

disposition

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
abstain rationale (n/a — this ruling answered): answered — no abstain rationale applies

setup-shape — why the checklist band did or didn't render

decision: NOT_SETUP_SHAPED — no setup-shape pattern matched this question

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 420), so "no registered errata card matched" above could never have matched one

Errata scope: the gate above matched this ruling's own edition only. When an ask also reads an expansion, that expansion's own registered errata cards stay outside the match — a stated phase-1 limitation, not a failed lookup.