Mihoko Fukuji

Mihoko Fukuji (福路 美穂子, Fukuji Mihoko) is a Kazekoshi Girls' High School student and the captain/ace of their mahjong team.

Appearance
Mihoko has shoulder-length blonde hair, her most distinguishing characteristic is her heterochromia that she keeps her right eye closed to hide her heterochromia from others; her left eye is reddish-gold while her right eye is actually sapphire blue and large breasts.

She wears a standard Kazekoshi uniform.

Personality
Mihoko is a very respectful girl who thinks of others first. Despite her age she seems more of a motherly figure towards her club members rather than a sempai, protecting them from their abusive coach. She is useless when it comes to technology. She has impressive powers of observation and deduction.

Being gentle towards everyone including her mahjong opponents, she is a perfect figure in her school and takes care of the house chores in the Kazekoshi mahjong club. She believes that doing so allows other members to practice with ease, which has the reverse effect of other members worrying about her instead.

Prefectural Tournament Arc
Mihoko is introduced when she and the rest of Kazekoshi enter the tournament hall, surrounded by press, she also takes note when Ryuumonbuchi arrives. She is next seen congradulating Kana Ikeda on a good victory, however back in Kazekoshi's waiting room Mihoko is slapped by their coach for giving a subpar performance and protected Kana from the same treatment. Afterward she comforts the rest of the team and is glad hearing that Ryuumonbuchi made it to the finals so they can exact revenge for last year.

The next day at the start of the finals; she gives Kiyosumi's Yuuki Kataoka her lunch thinking she was hungry before the match. When it starts Ryuumonbuchi's Jun Inoue targets Yuuki throughout most of the match, Mihoko opens her right eye and begins to help Yuuki win. But this was short lived as Mihoko then proceded to dominate the remainder of the match for a convincing win. In the waiting room she is greeted and congradulated by all of her underclassmen.

She is next seen with a happy expression on her face because she was able to praise Miharu Yoshitome for protecting their lead. When it came time for Bundou's match to begin she notices that Hisa Takei was Hisa Ueno, a person she had dealings with in the past, and worries for Seika Bundou. Throughout the first half of the match she comments and even cries because she thinks she has failed her teammate. At intermission she races towards the playing hall to give advice to Bundou and glances at Hisa. The anime extends this with a flashback showing Mihoko and Hisa during the national middle school tournament. In this, she is having a tough time with her and forgets to keep her right eye closed. Hisa then remarks on how pretty her eyes are among other things. Afterward Mihoko is shown at Kazekoshi's opening ceremony searching for Hisa.

As Kana leaves for her match, Mihoko looks at the list of competitors and notices that Hisa chose Saki Miyanaga as captain and looked at her play records. She notices that there is another monster that Kana will have to look out for. Throughout the game she is seen worring over Kana and at intermission comforts her distraught underclassmen. However she was impressed later in the match when she saw Kana refuse to quit and cheered on when she won a big hand. She was seen shocked after Kiyosumi made a comeback hand to win the tournament. When a defeated Kana makes her way to the waiting room, Mihoko tries to protect Kana from their coach and is disheartened as the coach removes Kana's shirt from her face to reveal her in tears. After coach Takako Kubo's kind words she holds Kana and is impressed with the coach.

Individual Tournament Arc *Anime Only*
Before the tournament Mihoko is seen doing the laundry when Kana tries to convince her to prepare instead. Mihoko explains that they will be having a training camp soon and having clean sheets is a must. She tells Kana and the other's hiding to do their best and goes back to doing chores.

When the individuals get under way, Mihoko does extremely well ranking near the top of the leaderboards. At lunchtime she is seen mapping out the progress of her underclassmen and encouraging them. During the last round of the day she is set to face Hisa Takei. Throughout the match Mihoko is constantly thinking about Hisa and even considered loosing to her. But thinking of her pride as Kazekoshi's captain Mihoko opens her right eye and makes a comeback victory. After the match Hisa confronted Mihoko about their previous match in middle school which makes Mihoko teary eyed and thanks her for the match. Afterwards Hisa says they'll see each other again because there's still one more day, making Mihoko blush because she thought she might not see her again. The next day heading into the final matches of the individual tournament with an overwhelming lead, Mihoko is once again pitted against Hisa. With Mihoko leading a close match throughout, on the final hand Hisa hit a tsumo and made a comeback victory. The outcome didn't matter though as Mihoko still held on to first place and won the individuals, she was then congradulated by Hisa.

After the tournament she and the rest of Kazekoshi get invited to a combined training camp by Kiyosumi. However she has trouble deciding whether to accept or not. She later appears at Kiyosumi's student congress room to inform Hisa that Kazekoshi would be attending thanks to her underclassmen teammates persuading her to attend. After a brief conversation about how lucky they are to have good underclassmen, Hisa invites Mihoko to watch the fireworks being displayed that night at a festival. Mihoko is last shown on the mahjong club's roof viewing the fireworks beside Hisa.

Combined Training Camp Arc
Mihoko is with the rest of participants of the training camp, having her free time. The next day Mihoko makes snacks for everyone and Hisa is the first one to grab a bite. She then complements her resulting in Mihoko blushing. Later when Hisa decides she needs to get stronger, Mihoko was one of the ones she chooses to play against. She appears on the last day, making Tsuruga lunches and seeing them off with Hisa. Before leaving Mutsuki Tsuyama gives her a card to give to Bundou. After the camp she is back doing laundry at Kazekoshi.

National Tournament Arc
At the start of the arc, it is revealed that Kazekoshi will be sharing the same room as Kiyosumi (Kazekoshi is there because of Mihoko's entry in the individuals). We see Mihoko talking to Mako Someya about her experiences at nationals and later petting on Kana before the tournament draw. During Kiyosumi's free time Mihoko is seen shopping with Hisa carrying the same bag together. When Kiyosumi leaves for their first match she sees them off. In the anime, Kana expresses her frustration at Hisa laughing at halftime after her poor performance. Mihoko tells her that she isn't laughing for nothing and is sure that Hisa will be her old self in the second half.

Mihoko appears after Satomi Kanbara fetches her to help out the Achiga mahjong team. When she arrives its revealed that she made them some dinner, then is shown briefly playing Kuro Matsumi.

Final Eight Arc
Mihoko is with Kana, Mako, and Hisa watching the semi-finals match of Achiga's. When Mako wonders if the first years will make it into the arena before the first players match is over, Mihoko says the way things are going its impossible to tell.

Before Kiyosumi heads to the semi-finals, Mihoko hands Hisa a lunch and wishes them luck. Later she is shown being happy when Hisa's match starts

National Tournament Arc
As Hisa mentions Achiga, Mihoko interrupts her to apologize. She then says that she has played Achiga before but Hisa tells her that it's nothing to apologize for. Later Hisa finds Saki's tell and says that she was going to ask Mihoko to do it but would've felt bad about it. Mihoko then says that if Hisa had asked her, she would've done it.

Before Kiyosumi's meeting, Hisa says that she wished the 5th place match had a full day dedicated to it instead of a few hanchan, but Mihoko points out that in the prefectural tournament it was like that until the finals. When Hisa later tells Yuuki not to play mahjong until her match tomorrow, it gives Mihoko a puzzled look.

She watches the 5th place matches with Kana, Nodoka, and Yuuki. When the vanguard match is finished, Nodoka and Yuuki leave and she wishes them luck.

National Championship Arc
She watches Yuuki's match and tells Kana that she reminds her of the girl because she never gives up.

Hisa gets in touch with her and asks to borrow a sewing kit. However, when she was to meet up with her, it was Yuuki instead. Mihoko asks where Hisa was and Yuuki tells her that the president wants to be alone before the match. She tells the girl that she's a little worried. She later goes to the playing hall and spots Nodoka Haramura along with Yukiko Maya and Yuan Iwadate. She tells them that she is worried about Hisa and they decide to look for her. However, she is stopped from entering the area for players due to having not played that day.

Mako thinks back to Hisa's advice during the early stages of her match. Here Hisa explains Yuu Matsumi and her control over red tiles. When she couldn't give too much advice, Hisa says that mahjong is a bit like cooking but is quickly made fun of by Kana Ikeda. Mihoko then explains her cooking analogy. She says that we cook depending on what ingredients and time we have and consider how others are going to react. Kana says she's way too soft on Hisa and Mako speechless.

Playing Style/Abilities
As Kazekoshi's ace, Mihoko is a very skillful player. Her special ability comes when she opens her right eye: this allows her to calculate how the game progresses with excellent accuracy. By taking into account how players organize and physically discard their tiles, she can predict opponents' hands with amazing precision, even being able to guess what yaku the opponent has, how long they've been in tenpai, or which tiles would be useful for them to use.

However, even without her ability, she is an exceptional player: coming second in the first day's East-only qualifiers (second only to Yuuki Kataoka) and winning the Nagano Prefecture's individual tournament over Nodoka Haramura and Saki Miyanaga, typically without needing to resort to her ability. In Nagano's Team Tournament final, before she began using her ability, she managed to stay solid second place gaining a fair amouunt of points even against Jun Inoue, a particularly powerful player (capable of dropping players 100,000 points within 2 hanchan, and completely obliterating Kazekoshi's vanguard in the 70th interhigh).

Etymology

 * The name Mihoko means "beautiful" (美) (mi), "grain" (穂) (ho) and "child" (子) (ko).
 * Mihoko's surname Fukuji means "fortune" (福) (fuku) and "road" (路) (ji).

Trivia

 * Mihoko reached the semi-finals of the Saimoe 2009 tournament.
 * Mihoko is the current Nagano Individual Tournament Champion.
 * In the previous prefectural tournament, Mihoko played vice-captain.
 * Mihoko has heterochromia and because of her self-consciousness, she opens her right eye to no one, not even her teammates.