Goita

Goita is a traditional Japanese card and tile game that originates from the Noto region of Ishikawa Prefecture. It is played with a set of 32 tiles or cards that resemble the pieces used in shogi, Japanese chess, though unlike real shogi pieces the Goita tiles are uniform in size and have blank, undecorated backs, so that a player's holdings cannot be read from the reverse side. The game is played by four players divided into two partnerships of two, and belongs to the shedding-and-climbing family of card and tile games, in which the goal is to be the first side to have a player successfully play out every tile in hand; a full match is contested over multiple hands, with partnerships accumulating points toward a target of 150 to determine the eventual winner. Goita is believed to descend from an earlier Meiji-period card game played with a larger set of around forty to forty-two cards, and is related to another regional Japanese game called Iro Kammuri, or Color Crowns, which is played with a card set adapted from the poetry-matching game uta-garuta.