competitive karuta
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One of my biggest challenges with learning to play karuta are penalties (otetsuki, お手付き). A penalty happens in one of there scenarios: In all three cases the result is the same: your opponent is allowed to send a card over to you. Their card count is reduced by one (advantage), and your card count also…
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Dear Readers, I am happy to report that I’ll be appearing in a podcast about the Hyakunin Isshu and Karuta coming up in a few weeks! It is exciting to collaborate with a fellow karuta player, “Steph”, who hosts the Karuta Chat podcast. I’ll have more details soon, but it will be a chance to…
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Having played Karuta now for three months and against a variety of opponents, including computer opponents, I realize that I get otetsuki (お手付き, “penalties”) a lot. Like, a lot. In one in-person game, I was nervous and got eight penalties which is simply painful. Even when playing against the computer on hard mode, I get…
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As part of my efforts to improve my practice routine and make small, incremental gains, I got some helpful advice from the Seattle Karuta Club, and was pointed toward this website. This Karuta Club, the Akita Kohohana Karuta Club, in Akita Prefecture demonstrates how to practice Karuta using a method called fuda-waké (札分け), meaning “distributing…
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Recently I learned about the concept of go-shoku Hyakunin Isshu (五色百人一首), or five color Hyakunin Isshu. During my recent trips to Japan, while shopping for Karuta sets, I did see some advertised as “five color sets” but didn’t understand the significance, and there is no information in English. According to this helpful website, it’s a…
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After taking up karuta with the local community, I was soon introduced to the international Karuta Discord group (Discord invite link here). The international karuta community is great, and you get to meet people from places like Brazil, Russia, Germany, etc. If you are even casually interested in karuta, or the hyakunin isshu, it’s a…