If you ever want to see a Japanese person's eyes light up, ask them about "Karuta", or traditional Japanese card games. The term karuta comes from the German word "karte" meaning oddly enough "card". I first learned about this game when I visited Misawa Senior High in order to help the students prepare for their school trip to Hawaii (lucky bastards). The students had to do presentations about Japanese culture and two groups both chose to explain variations of the game karuta. They were supposed to speak for 30 minutes, but instead they only spoke for about 5 as karuta doesn't really require much explanation... at least not in its simplest form. The object of the game is to collect picture cards. 48 cards are laid out on a table, and the dealer describes one of the cards in front of the players. The first person to spot the card yells "Hai!" and slaps down their hand and takes it. That's it. That's the game. At least that's what I thought until a teacher at school gave me a much more indepth explanation of the different types of karuta, its use of poetry & proverbs and its importance in Japanese culture. Those lazy Misawa students didn't mention any of that stuff!


So I spent today cutting and pasting my own custom made X-mas karuta cards using these winter themed flash cards. It seemed like everyone that walked by my desk was fascinated by what I was up to. Actually I'm not sure if they were interested so much in what I was doing, or just in shock that I actually was doing something other than surfing the net or sleeping. No, I think it was the cards. The one they all seemed to really get a kick out of was this one:


The idea of going out into the forest and cutting down a Christmas tree really facinated them. I can't even remember how old I was the last time my family ever had a real Christmas tree in the house, but I didn't want to spoil the fantasy so I didn't mention how most people buy artificial trees these days. I'm not really sure what Japanese people do on Christmas exactly. I just know that they usually go to work, then at night they eat some Christmas cake. Judging from all the X-mas junk for sale in the stores I figure that there may be gifts and Christmas decorations involved too, but I'm not sure.



One more thing.. they are actually selling turkey at the Max Value in Noheji! Well, actually they are only selling "Smoked turkey leg" but that's still more turkey than I've ever seen for sale in Japan before. If there are any Aomori JET's reading this that have a hankering from some turkey, or at least the leg of a turkey, then head down to Noheji's Max Value tout suite like!