Sunday, March 01, 2009

The beginning of Spring

The arrival of March gives me a sort of excitement in term of a new biginning of my routine life. Well it is not my personal sentiment. For every Japanese spring has a very special meaning respectively. There are dozens of annual and social events which have been handed down for generations as our culture throughout the year. I think many of them comes up in spring time. Spring in Japan refers to the farewell to the previous year and the new beginning of our routines in school, workplace and the like. In March we have the Doll Festival for wishing girls' life-long happiness and health. The dolls in the pictures were specially given to my daughter from her grandmother in time for celebrating her first Doll's Festival. It has been over 20 years since then and we still put them out of the boxes and decorate them for this day as if we are celebrating our reunion once a year. This annual event has originally started as a way of warding off evil spirits on newborn baby- girls and the dolls were considered to act as a charm. That way every parents and families of ancient eras wished their daughters for a healthy and happy married life.
Nowadays it has more pleasure giving elements. The dolls with ancient costumes are surely worth of being displayed. They make us happy and it is such a peaceful time to enjoy some sweets and drinks with family and with friends besides the dolls. I love the tradition.

5 comments:

Dionne said...

Oh these photos are just ADORABLE! What lovely, cute, beautiful dolls! Spring sounds like an exciting time in Japan, when I eventually take a vacation out there some day, I will need to make sure to schedule it for Spring time!

Anya said...

Hello I accidentally came to your blog :))
I can also not so good English HEHE but we can read the text from each other !!!!!!
Nice and very lovely photo, spring has started, let's enjoy the Spring :))
Nice blog you have ;)
Many greetz from Anya & Kareltje (@^.^@) from The Netherlands

Anya said...

I want to tell you that I have copied folder guests, Thats great I like it very match:))))))
Thanks for the hint !!
Greetz Anya

littletiara said...

ooo... that's nice! I love the picture! I always want to have it, but then there's no such tradition like that here... aww... I've read dozen of comics with it inside :D

Anya said...

Its nice to have a blogfriend in Japan :))
We live so far away from each other and with blogging so close;)
Talk to you soooooooooooon !!

Anya & Kareltje (@^.^@)