I heard about an interesting site yesterday on rec.games.playing-cards, all about Japanese traditional Hanafuda cards and the games that can be played with them. ([Mikko also mentions them.])
The website and the cards look great. Unfortunately they are pretty expensive at [£15 plus postage for a pack*]. I am also wary of traditional card games. Just because a game has been played for a long time by many people does not mean it’s good.
On the other hand, I think I’ll find it easy to persuade my wife to play Hanafuda games with me. She did a Japanese degree, lived in Tokyo for a year and loves Japanese things in general (is there a word for that, like Francophile?).
loves Japanese things in general (is there a word for that, like Francophile?).
Japanophile. Google turns up almost 10,000 pages. There is even a magazine by that name.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=japanophile&btnG=Google+Search
You’d have thought that I would have discovered how to use Google by now.
I also had Nippophile mentioned to me, but I think Japanophile is the accepted phrase, judging by Google mentions – even though it’s not listed at Onelook.com.