She Went Looking for a Mahjong Store on Cape Cod. Nothing Came Up.

The search came back empty.

Jill Boudreau was in Chatham and wanted a new set of mahjong tiles. She didn't want to order them blind. She wanted to see them, pick them up and feel the weight of them in her hand. So she looked for a store.

"Nothing came up," she told the Cape Cod Chronicle. "I was shocked. Was it possible that there was no mahjong store within the 400 square miles of Cape Cod?"

A lease search instead of a shopping trip

Boudreau is a residential realtor in the Boston area with more than twenty-five years of business experience, and she has a home on the Cape. When a store didn't exist, she went looking for a place to put one.

"So I googled available commercial leases and up popped 726 Main Street."

It was a tiny retail space near the ball field that had been unused for a while. She set out to "glow up" the space. In November 2025 it opened as Main Street Mahjong. The Chronicle reported it's believed to be the only brick-and-mortar mahjong store on Cape Cod.

The tiles are the point

The sets are what you notice first. Boudreau calls the look "a blend of coastal chic with vibrant color and contemporary design. It's like eye candy!" Around them is everything a game night needs: mats, racks, tablecloths, cups, napkins and placemats. There's Rummikub, too, for the house that hasn't converted yet.

The basic machinery of the game is familiar. Four players. Three suits, called bams, craks and dots, plus jokers, flowers, dragons and winds. In the American version, the hands that count come from an annual card from the National Mah Jongg League. The tiles stay the same. The card doesn't.

From Maine, for a birthday

Then people started coming from out of state.

A mother, a grandmother and a daughter drove down from Maine to celebrate the daughter's 27th birthday at the shop. Four women flew up from Washington, D.C., to shop and stay for a mahjong event. "I am having a ball meeting great people!" Boudreau said. "They all came here because there was no similar place near them."

Closer to home, Chatham plays at the Center for Active Living, at the libraries and at yacht clubs like Monomoy. Boudreau says more men are asking to learn now, and more younger players, too.

Step one

For beginners, she teaches two levels of lessons in the shop and points people toward instructors around town. Her sales pitch is barely one.

"I tell them step one is to try the game," she said. "I never try to steer people. Look, compare, do what brings you joy."

And she wants to be clear about one thing. "It doesn't have to be uber competitive."

Down the street, the ball field has gone quiet for the year. In the little room up the block, someone is picking up a tile for the first time, feeling the weight of it, and learning what a crak is.

Main Street Mahjong | 726 Main Street, Chatham
Wed to Sat 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. · Sun noon to 5 p.m. · Tue by appointment · Closed Mon
(508) 470-5558