Shogi is played on a board of nine files and nine ranks. Each side has twenty pieces: a king, a rook, a bishop, two golds, two silvers, two knights, two lances and nine pawns.
The pieces are all the same colour. What tells you whose piece it is is the direction its point faces: your pieces point up the board, away from you, and your opponent's point down, towards you.
Who moves first
The player who moves first is sente 先手; the other is gote 後手. On this board Sente's army starts on ranks 1–3 at the bottom, and Gote's on ranks 7–9 at the top.
Along the bottom row, from the outside in, are the lance, knight, silver and gold, with the king in the middle. The second row holds just the bishop (on the left, h2) and the rook (on the right, b2). The third row is nine pawns.
Naming squares
On this site the files are lettered a to i and the ranks numbered 1 to 9, exactly as printed along the edges of every board — so the square in the middle is e5, and Sente's king starts on e1. A move is written from-square then to-square: g3g4 moves the pawn on g3 up to g4.
Your first move
Try it: Push the pawn on g3 up one square — the most popular first move in shogi. It opens the bishop's diagonal.