Walk into the Weston Council on Aging on the right afternoon and you will hear it before you see it: tiles sliding across folding tables, four-person games running back to back, a room split between women who learned to play decades ago in Florida and moms who picked it up last spring. It looks like any senior center activity that quietly outgrew its room. Regional magazines have also featured mahjong in the Boston suburbs. The coverage and the Council on Aging program offer two views of the game in Weston.
The Version That Made the Magazines
If you follow regional media, you probably met Weston's mahjong scene through Jenny Seeman's living room. Boston magazine profiled Seeman's home as one of the best tables in town, describing her as a warm, charismatic teacher introducing a new generation to what the piece called the year's hottest hobby. The piece highlighted decorative tile sets, teachers who share the game, and women playing at private tables. Boston magazine's 2026 Best of Boston list went a step further, naming a mahjong instructor in Weston among its honorees for the year, alongside a wine bar in Somerville and a cigar shop in the North End.
The Council on Aging Program
The Weston Observer traces the COA program to its first mahjong classes in fall 2023, before regional magazine coverage. Karin Ott, one of the original enrollees, remembers roughly 30 people signing up across every age group when the COA first offered the course. That detail places the COA program among the early chapters of Weston's mahjong scene: a public program run out of a senior center, open to anyone who wanted a seat.
From there it spread the way community programs actually spread: person to person, table to table. The Weston Observer quoted Ott describing her circle's expansion from the original COA group into offshoots of varying skill, with friends ranging "from beginners to old hats or 'mavens.'" The Weston Observer quoted Joan Heilbronner, president of the Weston Observer's board, saying that the game "truly allows people to make new friends, and genuinely have a good time."
The Range of Players at the COA
The Weston Observer reported Ott's description of players as moms with young children, people who work full time, and retirees, all at the same tables. The COA program brings together people with different schedules and stages of life.
The Weston Observer quoted another COA regular, Alison Braunstein, describing the game's central challenge as the need to constantly change strategy mid-round: "You have to pivot to come up with something else," she said, "so you are thinking very hard at all times." That kind of engagement, demanding but social, low-cost, endlessly repeatable, is exactly what keeps a community program alive for going on three years rather than one season. The COA program and private home games offer different settings, and both are part of Weston's mahjong scene.
Two Scenes, One Town, Rarely Overlapping
What makes Weston's version of this story worth telling is not that the game is popular here. National coverage in outlets like the Boston Globe and the Wall Street Journal has already established that mahjong is surging across the country. What is specific to Weston is that the town is running both versions of the trend simultaneously, largely without them touching. The COA's intergenerational drop-in group has been building since 2023. A private-table scene, including decorative tile sets, received regional press coverage later. That coverage highlighted a private instructor, while the COA program offers another perspective on mahjong in Weston.
Together, these accounts show two parts of Weston's mahjong scene: a public program and a private scene. They run on parallel tracks, with occasional movement between them but generally separate settings.
Why This Is Worth Noticing
A story about mahjong at the senior center offers another view of daily life in Weston. It is one of several small, local activities—from a farm stand to a concert series to a Tuesday afternoon game—that contribute to the town's community life.
If you already play, you know which room you learned in. If you have been meaning to try, the Council on Aging's program offers a place to learn at a folding table; regulars say beginners are welcome even with the game's complexity.
That is the shape of Weston's mahjong scene: two different settings where people are building the same habit for different reasons, both part of the town.
For more stories about the texture of daily life across Weston and the rest of MetroWest, from what's opening on Main Street to what a town meeting actually decided, follow along on Ashley Fuller's Keys & Coffee blog. If you are ever curious about the neighborhood beyond the folding tables, Ashley is always glad to talk.
