Upcoming play, ‘Hanafuda with Grandma,’ captures magic of traditional Japanese card game

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - For many in the senior community, the card game hanafuda brings back a lot of good moments of growing up in the islands.

Here in Hawaii, there is no one more qualified to talk about this than local hanafuda expert Helen Nakano, founder of Hanafuda Hawaii.

“My generation, we all played hanafuda. I mean, you go to your friend’s house, we didn’t have television. What else did we have?” she said.

There are 48 cards depicting seasonal plants and flowers in hanafuda. Players try to match winning combinations called yaku.

With the advent of electronic games, Nakano saw the decline of the interest to play the game and that prompted her to teach her granddaughter.

“She was about 5 or 6 years old. She’s hapa haole and lives in San Francisco and I saw her only a couple