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The Previous Grand Mufti (aka Max Brooks)
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[Jan. 11th, 2009|01:22 am] |
Zanzibar just keeps expanding it's own horizons.
Staircases are the hardest thing to draw. Seriously. I don't know why I'm compelled to put them into every project but for poop's sake they are nigh impossible to do with correct perspective. |
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[Jan. 11th, 2009|08:15 am] |
So, this last evening I learned how to play Hanafuda, one of the more interesting Japanese things I know of.
Hanafuda is a deck of playing cards that were designed to get around the prohibition against Western playing cards during the 19th century. Basically, Western playing cards were big business, and the Yakuza, even then a gang, were using them to gamble. After gambling was illegalized, and Western playing cards banned, the nobility and the middle class still liked to play card games. So, they created Hanafuda.
They work less like Western playing cards and more like tarot cards. There are 12 suits of four cards each, each suit representing a different month. January is Pine, February is Cherry Blossom, March is Apple Tree, etc. Each suit has a Light (moon, sun, stars, etc.), a Water (rain, lakes, snow), an Animal (crane, boar, deer, birds, one has a man out enjoying the spring rains) and a Scroll (each scroll bearing a seasonal haiku).
There are many different Hanafuda games, but the one I learned is Koi-Koi, which seems to work a bit like Old Maid, except with points. The idea is to exchange cards in your hand into a common pool, two at a time, by Month/Image. Then you get points by combining your doubles into larger themes. For example, getting all the Scroll cards is 20 points, getting a Bird, a Deer and a Boar is 10, and getting 5 Water cards is 5. There are a few wild combinations with rather poetic imagery (a Full Moon and a Cherry Blossom is a "Cherry Festival", either 1 or 10 points depending on what it's with; a Full Moon and Grass is a "Harvest Festival", same). Each season has one wild combination.
If the other player is out of matches or has nothing to trade into the pool, you can call "Koi-Koi", which means that any matches you make until the end of the turn is double points.
Weird scoring system, too. Each player STARTS with 50 points, and the winner gains while the loser goes into negative score.
Interestingly, Nintendo got it's start printing Hanafuda cards, and to this day still prints them. Now they make a special Super Mario themed edition for folks who don't want to be associated with the Yakuza...
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