ひなまつり (Hinamatsuri)

Hinamatsuri (Girls' Festival, also known as Dolls' Festival) and formally called Momonosekku (Peach Festival) occurs on March 3rd and is an occasion to pray for young girls' health and growth, good marriages, and happiness. Homes with girls as well as schools display dolls for the festival and dedicate to them peach blossoms, rice cake cubes, hishimochi (special colored diamond-shaped rice cakes), shirozake (sweet white sake), and other items. Leaving the hina display out too long is said to delay marriage. So it is customary to put them away soon after March 3rd.

The origin of the hinamatsuri is an ancient Chinese practice in which the sins of the body and misfortune are transferred to a doll and washed away by setting the doll in a river to drift away. When this practice spread to Japan, it was linked to girls playing with dolls and in the Edo Period (1603-1867) was developed into the hinamatsuri. Originally, the dolls were made of paper. Today, the dolls and the displays are quite intricate and can cost upward of 330,000 JPY (over 4,000 USD using today's exchange rate) for a seven-tiered display, such as shown in the top picture, which contains (from top platform to bottom platform) the emperor and empress, three court ladies, five musicians with different instruments, two guardians with hishimochi, three fellows, the bride's dowry, and transportation and obento boxes. The emperor and the empress alone can cost 85,000 JPY (over 1,000 USD).

To learn about this traditional aspect of Japanese culture, two friends and I attended an international communication society event. There we made our own origami hina dolls and ate hinamatsuri cuisine. I think I did a pretty good job making my lady, if I do say so myself. As a gift for all 30 of us in attendance, our origami sensei made each of us a lord for our lady.

The hinamatsuri feast was quite good -- an informal style of sushi whose name I can't remember along with specially-prepared cucumbers, strawberries, and amazake (a sweet, non-alcoholic drink made from rice). But my favorite part of the feast was the sakura mochi dessert -- pink-tinged mochi (sticky rice cake) with anko (red bean paste) wrapped in a preserved sakura (cherry) leaf. Many foreigners, as previously mentioned, don't like anko. And the flavor of the sakura leaf is quite sharp. But I love it!

To learn more about the hinamatsuri, I strongly recommend reading about it on Wikipedia.

'Til next time...

Won't You Be My Neighbor?

There is an aspect of American culture that I know only through TV and movies -- the practice of bringing a plate of cookies or some other such gift (such as the beer one of my former coworkers gave to her new college-aged neighbors) to welcome a new neighbor into the neighborhood. In my (shhh!) years of living in the U.S., I don't remember experiencing this practice myself. However, I don't have the best memory in the world. So if you're someone who brought something to my home(s), please forgive me for my forgetfulness. And if you're one of the many people to whom I never gave a welcome gift, please forgive me for my rudeness.

Today I've just experienced something that I'd known only through my language textbook. In Japan, the new neighbor doesn't receive gifts but gives omiyage (gifts) to all his/her new neighbors to introduce him/herself and to lay the groundwork for any future interactions they might have. The omiyage doesn't have to be large in terms of size or expense and is usually practical (e.g., hand towel) or delicious (e.g., sweets). I don't know if neighbors in five-story apartment complexes like the one I lived in last year buy omiyage for everyone in the building or just those who live on their floor. And in a neighborhood of houses, I don't know how far the neighbor-radius extends from one's house. But as my new apartment building is only for four tenants, thankfully my new neighbor didn't have to spend a lot of money to give us her omiyage.

As I already have plenty of hand towels, I was happy that my neighbor opted for delicious omiyage (cakes, cookies, and a surprise)!

'Til next time...