March 3rd: The Doll Festival

Today is March 3rd, which is 雛祭り (Hina Matsuri/Girls’ Day) in Japan. 　雛 (”hina”) means “doll” and 祭り　(”matsuri”) means “festival.” All across Japan, people are displaying their dolls in their homes. But, according to tradition, they have to take them down by the evening of March 4th. I don’t really know much about this day, but apparently, there is an old tradition that if a family leaves it’s dolls up too long, their daughter will find it difficult to get married.

I did see a couple displays. They are very nice. It’s too bad they only display them for a week or so every year. At one of the homes where I teach children, I had hina-arare rice crackers for the first time. It’s hard to describe them. There were pink, yellow, and brown ones, of varying sizes. They had the same texture as a corn puff, but with a mild flavor. This site has a good picture of what they looked like.

If you want to learn more about it, and see examples of some of the dolls, the Wikipedia article is here. And you can go here for a site on children’s festivals in Japan. And of course, you can also type in “hinamatsuri” in Google. If you want to look at pictures on Flickr, try here, here, or here.