Happy Girls' Day!

Since we have another girl in our family now, Girls' Day, or the Japanese Doll Festival Hina-matsuri, is even more fun to celebrate in Japan this year. As you may recall from last year's blog on this day, this is the day families pray for the happiness and prosperity of their girls and to help ensure that they grow up healthy and beautiful. So far, so good.

To recap, the custom mainly involves displaying dolls, which represent the emperor and empress during the Heian period, in your home. This tradition is said to ward off evil spirits. It evolved from the ancient Japanese tradition of placing straw hina dolls into water and watching them float away, symbolizing bad spirits being washed away. Dolls are usually displayed starting in mid-February up until the actual holiday, March 3rd, at which point it is important to promptly put them away lest your girls marry late in life.

Most girls in Japan have a set of hina-matsuri dolls. Most of the traditional dolls are extremely expensive and are usually given to girls on their first Girls' Day by their Japanese grandparents.

Sydney and Miranda obviously don't have Japanese grandparents. But in teaching English lessons, I've come to know as friends several very kind and thoughtful Japanese ladies. Noriko-san lets us think of her as a "Japanese grandma." She and Kayo-san gave Sydney and Miranda the pretty ceramic dolls above. And the adorable handmade dolls were a gift from another friend, Emiko-san. To me, these Girls' Day dolls are a constant reminder of the friends my girls and I have made in Japan, so although it's getting late, I just can't bring myself to put them away.