Hinamatsuri

March 1st, 2019

We started the day off early today wondering what special surprises a waits us. We had six chairs lined up in front of the carpet. Ken thinks A’s mommy is coming. Em thinks it’s for the girl’s festival. Or thinks it’s a birthday party. Al thinks the Japanese mom’s are coming. We closed our eyes and counted to 20. Viola! Kyoko (Ta’s mom), Eriko (Li’s mom), Hideko (A’s mom), Karin (Tai’s mom), Yoko and Teruki (Mo’s mom and dad) were sitting in front of us. They’re here to teach us about Hinamatsuri which is on March 3rd, this Sunday. What is a Hina doll? And what do you do with them? Kyoko and Hideko took turns to read a kamishibai to us. The first time is in Japanese and second is in English. The story talked about a bunny wondering what to do with a Hina doll. She went to her friends and they didn’t know either until they met an old lady in the mountain. The old lady told them that they can rub the Hina dolls on their body and send it down stream to cure the ailment. But the bunny and her friends didn’t want to send their precious dolls down the stream. They all started crying when the old lady showed up and suggested that they can use a paper one instead as replacement for the fancy Hina dolls. Yey! Now they can keep there dolls and pass it down for generations. After the story Yoko and Eriko explain that we eat chirashizushi (scattered sushi) on Hinamatsuri and we will be making that today along with our own Hina dolls. On the chirashizushi we scattered ham, eggs, cucumber, salmon, sweet tuna, seaweed and sprouts. For the Hina dolls we used a paper cup and wrapped beautiful origami paper around it for the kimono. We drew their faces in and added a fan in the front. When we were finished we also had some Hina-arare, which are small rice crackers covered in sugar. There were yellow, pink, green and white crackers. We all tried a little bit of the sweets before singing the Hinamatsuri song and biding farewell to the parents. Thank you all the moms and dad who came to help us celebrate Hinamatsuri.

We’re so glad that the rain stopped so we can go for a walk. We walked by the toy store to see the real Hina dolls. There was a set in the normal position sitting and there was even another pair that was standing. We walked around some more but the park was too tempting so we had to go in for a little fun. Since the slides were wet we squatted down and slid down on our feet. Needless to say we had a great time getting muddy and dirty!

The fun can only last for so long until we had to go back to school and finish the day with lunch and a resting time. That’s all from us today! We hope you’ve enjoyed our stories and we’ll be back on Monday! Take care!

Love,

Flowers Class Children