Girl's Day 2014

Somehow my parents never celebrated Girls Day when we were little, even though all three of us were girls... I guess they were both always busy working. It is called "Hina Matsuri" and is celebrated every year on the 3rd of March. The first year after your baby girl is born is especially special.

It is a very old tradition which started in the Heian Period (794-1185A.D.) At that time people believed that the dolls possessed the power to contain bad spirits. The dolls were set afloat on a boat and sent down a river to the sea with the belief that they take away troubles or bad spirits with them.

In modern times we display Hina Dolls in the house to celebrate the health and well being of the girls in the family. If you are born in a rich family Hina Dolls you display look like this (photo borrowed from Wikipedia).

The dolls are representing the Emperor, Empress, attendants and musicians. You can imagine you need to be quite wealthy to have this in a Japanese house (usually houses in Japan are tiny!).  

A set will cost thousands of dollars...

Having a girl in the family finally I really wanted to make the day special. I looked at a few dolls while we were in Japan (the reasonably priced ones...) but decided it is hard to bring them over and will be difficult to store here in Singapore so in the end I got Ashley this tiny little set.  I dressed Ashley in her pink Japanese dress for the day:



We made sure she got a special photo shoot though. Here is Ashley in front of a big Hinadan:



There are also some special foods you cook on Girls Day. 1) The clam soup - wishing your daughter will find someone who can spend her life with (kind of early for when your daughter is still zero!) since clam shells only match with the other of the pair. 2) Coloured rice cake - green, white, and pink are used to represent the land, snow and peach flower. It is shaped as a diamond and is believed to be the shape of one's heart - wishing your daughter's good health. 3) Rice crackers in 4 colours - pink, green, yellow and white representing the 4 seasons in Japan for wishing the daughter's good health throughout the year. 4) Sushi (of course!) - this has been a recent tradition having colourful sushi on the table implies the beginning of Spring.

I tried to incorporate a little bit of the above in dinner. She is still eating baby food so there was only a little I could do...



At least she was interested in the food and ate most of it by herself!!

The boys got some special treats too:


Luca just woke up from his late nap so he was a little grumpy....



Unfortunately Matthew was away flying so he couldn't cook me a special dinner :( but the kids and I had a great day. Such a fun thing to follow the traditions - I love it!