ok, had a quick look at shogi. Indeed a cool game because ofIf you want a very different chess, shogi is the best option in my opinion.
the handicap system, which resembles a bit my 'Fairchess' variant (*).
Otherwise it would be also a draw (**), ofcourse (at best play); look at the
(shogi) openings, best move for Black to start (chess notation) is c3-c4 (why
using other notation if we have chess notation) , releasing the bishop on b2.
The Japanese characters on the pieces are difficult to understand at first,
so imho Fairchess is the future; and it can be played on wooden ('3d')
boards as in the Tata steel tourn, whereas with Shogi, because of
all these promotion rules such pieces would be impractical (for the
rest shogi is an interesting agame, i admit..)
(*) where i asap will change the pawn-odds of the f2 pawn
removal into a c2 pawn removal.. (kudos LK).
https://www.chessvariants.com/rules/fair-chess
(**) continuing the opening tree in Shogi, if both sides play the best opening
moves, the Nnue eval when out of book is still around 'equal'. So there's no
winning method/strategy, and thus i consider the game as solved, ie it's a draw.
For the rest Shogi looks almost as cool as the renewed 'Fair-chess' will be (with the empty c2 square) coz neither Black nor White as a significant advantage (without handicaps).