Dedicated to “Rachel” and “Lore”, and to blog reader 猫. Thank you all for the encouragement!

In my last post, I talked about taking stock after a bad loss in karuta and focusing on small, incremental improvements rather than “shooting for the moon”. I used the Nintendo Switch game Fire Emblem: Three Houses as a source of inspiration.

The blog post title comes from the main character Byleth, who sometimes says this after combat. In the game, if your students defeat a foe in combat, they gain experience points making them grow stronger. If they are attacked by an enemy, they still gain experience. If they dodge an attack, do something supportive or other things non-combat related they also gain experience.

In other words, the characters get stronger not just from defeating foes, but from many other things too.

In the same way, I realized that Karuta isn’t just winning battles. It’s lots of small things you do and get gradually better at.

If you use the flash card “minigame” on the karuta app, how long did it take you to finish all 100 cards? Did you beat your time? If so, experience gained. If not, experience still gained.

If you tried a new way to arrange your cards on the board (tei’ichi 定位置), did it work better or worse? Experience gained either way.

If you practice listening and distinguishing tomofuda cards (cards with very similar kimari-ji), did you succeed? Even if not, experience gained.

If you listen to audio readings of the Hyakunin Isshu is it starting to sink in? Experience gained.

And so on.

Like Byleth says, each encounter or task is a chance to grow. It may not seem like it, but given a few weeks or months, you’ll begin to see the difference.

If you’re feeling down or discouraged, keep looking toward the skies and take it one step at a time.

Good luck and happy karuta’ing!

P.S. Fire Emblem: Three Houses is a criminally underrated game. Definitely check it out if you can. Also, image source above is from Nintendo.