I have joined a group of final year undergraduate students taking a module about climate change and development; we are waiting expectantly to play an educational game called Sendai that has been designed by some of their classmates around the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction that the students have studied in class. When the game starts, students split into three groups representing Japan, Mexico or Myanmar and their first task is to answer a series of questions about their respective countries to show their knowledge. The Japan team has the least amount of questions, reflecting the country's better-resourced and disaster-prepared state, and therefore finishes way ahead of the other groups. In the next task, the students use chairs to move across the room without touching the floor. Laughter and shouts fill the classroom as they lift, pull and push each other, in an experiential approximation of collaboration to strengthen disaster-risk governance, which is a central pillar of the Sendai Framework. Once again, Japan has the advantage by being able to use four chairs between the five players, while the Myanmar team has only two. This makes getting to the other side of the room impossible, and so the players have to ask Japan for help; it gives them two chairs but only in return for one of the resource cards each group was given at the beginning of the game. This shows Japan's heavy involvement in development aid, especially for other Asian countries, but also the fact that aid always comes with strings attached.

The third task focuses on another Sendai pillar, investments in disaster-risk reduction. Each group picks an investment card out of a hat, which tells Myanmar to prepare for a tsunami. After briefly consulting the Sendai Framework, the players decide that with the limited resources they have been given, they can invest in high sea walls and education, which earns them almost full points as it covers many of the Sendai targets. It also allows them to take ten blocks for their final task, which is to build a tsunami structure to manifest their disaster preparedness.