reflection #8

This week I taught one of my friends how to play Hanafuda. I just explained the basics of how to play the game and what the cards represent. First I told what the four types of cards are which is the Brights, the ribbons, animals, and trash cards. Then I showed her that each there were twelve types of flowers that represented the months of the year. Along with that I explained that each month contains at least two of the types of cards I explained in the beginning.

The hardest part was explaining the combinations because there were so many of them to memorize. I decided to explain the combinations based on what type of cards they were. So I explained all the basic types of combinations that can be made with the brights, ribbons, animals and finally trash. Then I told her about the special combinations like the sake cup. With it being able to be counted as an animal or a trash card along with being able to be combined with two of the bright cards, it can be very confusing. Then I told her about the point system of the game but I didn’t really go into much detail on it because I just wanted to work on the basics.

To make it easier on her visually I set up the cards like normal then I put both her hand and mine faced up on the table so I could help reminder her on wich ones matched. It was slow at first but as she got more used to all the combinations she didn’t need to have her hand showing after three rounds or so. Towards the end we got to do two rounds without her needing my help. It was a lot of fun teaching her how to play. I felt proud about being able to teach this game with confusing her too much. This game isnt hard to learn because the principle was simple to understand its just memorizing all the combinations that was hard.