Card Games

playing bozumekuri

On my last night with the Takeuchi family I played many card games with Tomoki, Shinsuke, and Asuka.  They taught me some Japanese games and I taught them some that we play in America.  The first game we played was shichinarabe.  You start with all four sevens in the middle and each person lays down the next card in counting order.  On the first turn, someone could play a 6 or an 8 and place it next to the seven of the same suit. You can pass up to three times; on your fourth pass you are out.   It was really fun even though I lost.  Another Japanese game they showed me was shinkeisuijaku.  It was the game that we call “Memory.”  All the cards are face down and you flip over two.  If they match then you keep the pair and if not then you flip the cards back over.  I got three pairs, so I didn’t win that game either.  The next game we played, bouzumekuri, used a deck of special cards.  There were one hundred different cards, each with a picture and a Japanese poem.  The different pictures were of girls in kimonos, normal men, and some bald men.  Drawing a bald man means you have to put all your cards in the middle and drawing a card with a girl means you get all the cards from the middle.  I almost won, but I drew a card with a bald man at the end and lost all my cards.  I taught my

Spoons (or, in this case, Chopsticks)

playing the game to learn hiragana characters

 family some card games from America too.  I tried to teach everyone Euchre (since it is a game invented and played in Michigan), but it was too complicated.  After that we played Spoons.  It was really fun.  We also played a Japanese game intended to help children learn the hiragana characters.  One person reads a card with a Japanese saying and everyone else tries to find the card with the hiragana for the first syllable which was said.  I knew most of the characters, so I had a good time.