reflection #1

This week I looked more into what Hanafuda was. I noticed that there were quite a few similarities and differences between this Japanese card games compared to the card games we play here.  For similarities I found out that there where many games that you can play with these playing cards just as how there are many games we can play with a deck of playing cards. Even with this similarity there are many differences like how the cards are smaller in size and made with thicker material that feels like cardboard. Unlike the 52 cards in regular playing cards hanafuda has 48 cards. These 48 cards are separated into twelve sets of four cards that represent the twelve months of the year.

The game that was played in movie Summer Wars was called Koi-Koi Hanafuda. The Japanese word “Hanafuda” literally translates to “flower cards”. This is because the pictures for the twelve months are represented by flowers such as cherry blossoms for the month of March or even chrysanthemums for the month of September. For the phrase “koi-koi” it means “come on” which represents how in the game when players want to continue their hand. The whole point of the game is to make combinations called “yaku’s”. When someone makes a yaku then they can take the points or they can continue by calling “koi-koi” to try to earn more points on top of what they just earned. Now that I know the basic idea of the game I will try to learn how to set it up and learn the point system for the yaku’s next week.