I’ve just started playing. The stuff from the beginning of the game can get a bit confusing. There’s one particular point on which I’ve seen two different interpretations. The player designated as East draws 14 tiles, and the others 13. The people who gave my first lesson had the East player stay with 14 throughout the game, that is on East’s first turn they draw and then discard. I’ve also read that on East’s first turn, they are only supposed to discard, not draw, and thus go down to 13 tiles like the other players. Which of those is the correct way to play?
East is the dealer. The hand starts with East discarding a tile. Next turn is South’s (sitting to the right of East), etc.
You cannot keep 14 tiles in your hand, because you need to draw one. The dealer is no different. Think of it this way: everybody has 13 tiles, then East begins by drawing one and then discarding (unless they already won 
You always have 13 tiles in your hand during play. (So, for example, if you call a quadruplet, you draw an extra replacement tile.)
I have a rules question about American MahJong: do people play with a furiten rule in place, or never do? E.g., if you discard, say, a 5 of Bamboo, and later you can win with a 2 or 5 of Bamboos, you cannot claim either of those off an opponent’s discard.
We don’t have that rule. You can claim the different 5 Bam later. I have no idea how the 2 Bam would even relate to this so yet another difference.
Ok, thanks.
It’s just a Japanese rule, then. You previously discarded the 5 Bamboo in my example, so as long as a 5 Bamboo would complete your hand, you cannot declare a win on a discard of any tile— I said 2 Bamboo for instance but literally any tile. You would have to draw them yourself or change your waits to something not including the 5 (or any other tile you previously discarded)
I understand. You can take any discard, even if you happened to dump it earlier. It would be very unlikely to happen to need a tile that you tossed earlier but it could happen. A kind of exception is with Jokers. Jokers are dead when they are discarded and can never be called. I think most Asian variants don’t use Jokers at all though.
Rules are going to vary, but an arguably pretty standard type of game in Japan will not have any of the bonus (flowers, seasons, etc.) or joker tiles in play but frequently will have three red number five tiles— one from each suit— that count for a bonus (+1 “han”, and each “han” will, roughly speaking, double the number of points that your hand is worth, just part of the potential wild point swings in Japanese scoring)
Riichi is know to be the wildest version and big with gamblers. It’s a completely different vibe.