Simple yet exciting! Recommended games and activities for year-end parties
Many of you probably attend several year-end parties—at work, with friends, and in your neighborhood—every year, right?
Looking back on the past year and chatting with colleagues and friends makes for a great time.
And the entertainment games—like bingo and quizzes—might be part of the fun, too.
But when you’re in charge of the entertainment, it can be hard to decide what games to play.
Ideally, you want something simple that everyone can enjoy and get excited about.
In this article, we’ll introduce classic games that meet those needs!
Once you’ve decided on the games for this year’s year-end party, don’t forget to prepare the prizes!
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Simple yet exciting! Recommended games and recreational activities for year-end parties (51–60)
Kappa Plate Ball-Carrying Race
It’s also great to use paper plates at the party venue for an obstacle-course-style game! If you’ve got a large space, the excitement doubles.
Balance a paper plate on your head, hold it in place with your hands, and put a ping-pong ball on top.
The winner is the person who finishes with the most ping-pong balls still on their plate after clearing all the obstacles.
Simple obstacles made from tables and chairs are plenty.
Even just doing one lap around the venue along the walls works well.
You can customize the obstacles in many ways—like greeting the department head or playing rock-paper-scissors with a junior colleague.
Don’t forget to prepare classic sports day-style background music to play during the game!
Shake Shake Kaki-no-Tane Championship
We’d like to introduce a game that uses “Kaki no Tane,” a snack well-known as a staple treat and drinking companion.
Prepare a plastic bottle packed full of Kaki no Tane.
Participants take turns shaking the bottle to pour Kaki no Tane onto a plate.
The time limit is 5 seconds, so once 5 seconds are up, pass the bottle to the next person.
When everyone has had a turn, count the Kaki no Tane; the person with the highest number wins.
They look like they’ll come out easily, but they don’t come out as quickly as you’d think.
Since it’s a game where you’ll want time to think about the best shaking technique to get more pieces out, going later in the order might give you an advantage!
No Katakana Hint Quiz
Figuring out the answer from the hints is the same as in a regular quiz.
However, in this “No Katakana Hint Quiz,” there’s a rule that you must not use katakana in the hints.
For example, if the answer is “supercar,” you might want to say “faster than a sports car” or “has a cool design,” but katakana is not allowed, so you have to rephrase it as “faster than other cars” or “the shape of the car body is cool.” The quiz giver should make full use of their vocabulary and choose words that are easy for the solver to understand!
Gesture Game
When you think of variety shows, NHK might not be the first thing that comes to mind, but the NHK quiz-variety show “Gesture” might be an exception.
After all, it entertained households for a remarkable 15 years! The simple rule—act out gestures based on a prompt—must have really resonated.
How about playing a gesture game together? You don’t need any special materials, so you can start the event on the spot.
If you have a board to display the prompts, it’ll be even more exciting—so organizers, please prepare one!
Simple yet exciting! Recommended games and activities for year-end parties (61–70)
Beef Tongue Game
It’s a super fun game that’s simple and requires no props.
Rhythm is key: keep the tempo with “Gyuu-tan, gyuu-tan, gyuu-tan-tan” as the first round, and everyone forms a circle and claps along to the chant.
With hands together, the first person starts on the cue “Gyuu.” The next person claps their joined hands on the “tan” part.
As you move into the second and third rounds, the rule is that the final “tan” claps increase by one each time.
If you throw off the tempo, skip a phrase, or make a mistake, you lose.
Speeding up the tempo raises the excitement and gets everyone hyped! Don’t forget to prepare a penalty for the loser (lol).
Double-Double Fight Game
Baibai Fight Game is a game where players compete to say prompted words in time with a specific rhythm.
The original song is CANDY TUNE’s “Baibai FIGHT!”, and you succeed if you can say the prompts consecutively to the repeating rhythm at the start of the track.
In this version of the game, the prompts are shown as illustrations, so you have to quickly figure out what each picture represents.
Plus, with similar-sounding words like “baito” (part-time job) and “baiku” (motorcycle) appearing in succession, you might end up tripping over your tongue.
It’s tricky, but whether you nail it or not, it always gets the crowd going—a perfect game for parties.
Russian roulette with super-spicy snacks
There’s a segment called the “Ultra-Spicy Challenge” on the NTV variety show Ariyoshi Seminar, and just watching it makes your mouth burn, doesn’t it? These days, even super-spicy vegetables like habaneros, which used to be hard to find, are available at large supermarkets.
Let’s get some mildly spicy snacks and play a Russian roulette game with extra-spicy ones to get everyone hyped! There are plenty of fairly hot snacks on the market, like “Maiko-han Hii Hii Curry Senbei” and “Oni-Kara Kaki no Tane & Peanuts.” But even if things get exciting, make sure not to pressure anyone into it!