Karuta (かるた) is one of the most popular traditional games to still be played in Japan today.

You don't need to know Japanese to play, but you should learn hiragana before playing. These are best memorized through repetition and don’t require you to start learning the actual Japanese language to be good at the game.

Basic Rules:
  1. Spread out all the “grabbing cards”, torifuda, on your playing surface, evenly between the players. All of the cards ought to be fairly spaced out (to facilitate claiming) and be facing up.
  2. The reader then shuffled the “reading cards”, yomifuda, and selects a random card, which they then read out.
  3. The players then scramble to locate the appropriate torifuda, and touch it, thus claiming it.
  4. The game ends when cards have run out, and the player with most torifuda wins.