Players dressed in ancient costumes have faced off in the traditional Japanese card game karuta at a shrine in Kyoto for the first time in three years. Eight women clad in colourful kimonos took part in the annual New Year's event at Yasaka Shrine on Tuesday.
The shrine houses a mythological Japanese deity, Susanoo-no-Mikoto, who is said to have composed the first tanka, a type of traditional Japanese poem.
The game features a collection of Japanese tanka poems, written by 100 poets from the 7th through 13th centuries.
A reader recites the first half of a poem, and players pick out the card bearing the latter half.
