‘Karuta’ poetry card game players in hot water at match held in Wakayama Prefecture hot spring town

Video footage taken at the Kawayu Onsen hot spring resort area in Tanabe, Wakayama Prefecture, shows participants scrambling into the steaming Otogawa river in a contest to find and retrieve small wooden placards during the Senninburo Karuta Taikai festival held on Jan. 20. Sixty-eight people in 17 teams joined in on the aquatic version of “karuta”--a card game that involves finding and matching poetic verses usually played around New Year’s--in a pool made by temporarily damming the naturally hot waters of the river. This annual event was held about three weeks later than usual and at a smaller scale because of the lingering effects of a powerful typhoon that hit the region this past summer.