Woe be unto you, foolish soul, who sees tiny, 101-year-old Yukiko Murata smiling sweetly across the card table and thinks, “Easy pickings.”

A late-blooming card shark, Murata started playing the traditional Japanese card game hanafuda just a few months ago and has since become a regular at Lanakila Multi-Purpose Senior Center’s weekly Hanafuda Poai.

Whether paired with daughter Jo-Ann, son-in-law Jim Kramer or, most lethally, partner in crime James Takamiya, the centenarian from Sheridan Street plays to win.

Which she does.

Often.

“Hanafuda can be kind of difficult,” she says, chuckling. “But I can still count.”

Murata and Takamiya are particularly adept at collecting high-value yaku — card combinations that yield maximum points in the matching game.

The group formed after a presentation by Hanafuda Hawaii founder Helen Nakano in August. About a dozen seniors now show up for the weekly games, which offer a regular opportunity to get out, socialize and participate in a Western-influenced Japanese entertainment that dates back to the 18th century.

“It’s good to go out and talk to people,” Murata said. “It keeps you going instead of just staying at home and twiddling your thumbs, which is no fun.”

In a century and a year of life, Murata has done scant little thumb-twiddling.

The former Yukiko Hamada grew up on Liliha Street and attended Lanakila Elementary, Central Middle and McKinley High School before leaving school to manage a barbershop her father had acquired.

One day a young man named Richard Murata stopped by. The two had met at a dance, and Richard was impressed at how kind Yukiko had been to a friend of his who wasn’t always popular with the opposite sex.

Yukiko warned him that her hair-cutting skills weren’t quite polished, and he assured her that he didn’t mind. He returned the next day, and twice more after that, for “adjustments.”

By that time Yukiko was more than a little irritated. Luckily, four visits were finally enough for Richard to summon the courage to ask her out.

They eventually married, settled on Sheridan Street in a home Richard purchased at age 19, raised their daughter, Jo-Ann, and remained inseparable until Richard died in 1993 at age 78.

Murata’s days now are as busy as they ever have been. While she enjoys playing hanafuda, she doesn’t play at home — “I’ve got things to do!” she insists.

Like her late husband, Murata enjoys gardening, and she typically wakes early in the morning to rid her little garden of slugs and droppings left by the neighbor’s cats. A self-proclaimed “champion weeder,” she says she gets a workout from squatting and rising, squatting and rising, to remove all of the unwanteds rising amid her plantings of Meyer lemons, navel oranges, wing beans, cucumbers, cilantro, choy sum, edamame, eggplant, corn and gai lan.

In addition to her weekly hanafuda group, Murata visits the Lanakila center for fusion exercise (a chair-based hybrid of yoga and tai chi) and a “brain exercise” class.

A devoted lifetime learner, Murata also takes advantage of the University of Hawaii’s Na Kupuna Program, which has allowed her, Jo-Ann and Jim to take classes in tropical agriculture, organic farming, anthropology, tourism, history, geography, the politics of film and many other subjects for free.

More? Murata designs bags, makes feather hakupapa and sews just about all of the clothes that she, Jo-Ann and Jim wear. She and Jim get along so well (“When I first met him, I told Jo-Ann, ‘He’s a nice guy … for a haole!’” she said), the two of them often ride the bus together and enjoy watching the nightly newscast and discussing political and social issues into the evening.

“It doesn’t take long to get this old,” Murata said, laughing as usual. “But it’s been a good life. It still is a good life!”