Karuta: Alternative

Everyone starts with their hands on their knees or behind their back.
Keep things interesting when there is only a couple of cards remaining by saying words not in the remaining cards, but tell the students you are going to do this, damasu.
Use various objects to slap the cards instead of the conventional hand -- fly swatters, piko-piko hammers, etc.

*KARUTA ALTERNATIVE: *
In usual Karuta, students battle each other, but in this game students in each group work together to battle other groups. Put students in groups and assign team names or numbers.
Hand out cards to each group. For example, let's use fruit cards.
Yell out a random set of words from the cards, example: APPLE, PEACH, BANANA, MELON!
Students in the team listen and pick out those cards and put them in order, trying to be the first team to do so.
The first team to get the apple, peach, banana and melon cards in the correct order is the winner of that round.