In Japan, during the 1800's, a new game was created to circumvent laws banning playing cards due to gambling and it is still played to this day. It is called Hanafuda and it uses a deck of cards similar to Western-style playing cards, except that instead of 4 suits there are 12, and instead of 13 cards to a suit, there are only 4. Hanafuda is a relatively simple game to play, in which learning to recognize the cards will be the largest hurdle. Once that is done, however, the game is a lot of fun to play.