What is Karuta?
Karuta is a Japanese card game. The word "karuta" is from the Portuguese word "carta".
The basic idea of any karuta game is to be able to quickly determine which card out of an array of cards is required and then to grab the card before it is grabbed by an opponent. There are various types of cards which can be used to play karuta. It is also possible to play this game using two standard decks of playing cards.
There are two kinds of cards used in karuta. One kind is yomifuda or "reading cards", and the other is torifuda or "grabbing cards." As they were denoted, the words in the yomifuda are read and players will have to find its associated torifuda before anybody else does.
The two types of karuta cards that are most often seen are the "uta-karuta" and "iroha-karuta".
In "uta-karuta", players try to find the last two lines of a tanka given the first three lines. It is often possible to identify a poem by its first one or two syllables. The poems for this game are taken from the Hyakunin Isshu and are traditionally played on New Year's Day.
Anyone who can read hiragana can play "iroha-karuta". In this type, a typical torifuda features a drawing with a kana at one corner of the card. Its corresponding yomifuda features a proverb connected to the picture with the first syllable being the kana displayed on the torifuda.
Source: Wikipedia
A Note on Tanka
Tanka consists of five units (often treated as separate lines when Romanized or translated) usually with the following mora pattern:
5-7-5 / 7-7.
The 5-7-5 is called the kami-no-ku ("upper phrase"), and the 7-7 is called the shimo-no-ku ("lower phrase").
Source: Wikipedia
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