Summer Wars lover, Hanafuda Beginner

Summer Wars is an amazing action, coming of age, heartfelt movie. If you've seen it great, if not I highly recommend it. I'm a lover of playing cards and after seeing this film I had to know if this game really existed and it does!

My Deck

This is the deck I bought, link is attached to the image. It took about a week to ship to my apartment. They are Nintendo brand and well made. The "cards" are really like tiles, they're small and slick. It takes awhile to get use to shuffling them but they come with a plastic protective case which is useful. The instruction manual, as I should have expected, was in Japanese. So I had to scrounge the internet to find the instruction links.

Useful Links

This is one of the print outs I used to learn the 12 suits of Hanafuda. The 12 suits stand for each month in the year. If you click the image it will link you to more information on the point system and card combinations to acquire points.

Another website I found useful for actual playing style is http://hanafuda.richmind.net/koi-koi.

Be careful looking up information for Hanafuda because there are different variations besides the Summer Wars version.

My Explanation

Deal the cards how you like but 8 cards go to your opponent, 8 cards for the playing field and 8 cards in your hand. The remaining deck gets set to the side.

Look over your hand, Yaku is the term for points, if you have 4 pairs, 2 of a suit four times, you can automatically win. If you have 4 cards of one suit you're allowed to set that down. No immediate Yaku then you start playing the game.

You can only match 1 card out of your hand to what is face up in the playing field at all times. If there are 2 cards that match on the field with the one you're playing you must pick between the 2. If there is 3 cards that match the one you're playing then you take all 3.

If you cannot play a card out of your hand to match what is on the playing field you must discard from your hand to the field.

If you make a match you take the pair and set them in front of you.

After you make a match or discard you know flip the top card off of the remaining deck. If this card matches the field you take the pair if not the card stays behind on the field. Then it is your opponents turn.

Hope this helped & good luck playing Hanafuda!