kitsunekunblog:For Hinamatsuri, we found a nagashibina event to attend in Ibaraki.  For the annual ‘

kitsunekunblog:For Hinamatsuri, we found a nagashibina event to attend in Ibaraki.  For the annual ‘Doll Festival’ or ‘Girls Day’ in Japan on March 3rd, traditional dolls are set out on display in Japanese homes and lots of Japanese museums, schools, and other public places.  Way back in the day, people used to make straw or fabric dolls as vessels to carry any future misfortunes that might befall their children, and they sent them down a river on rafts, to carry the misfortunes away.  Somewhere down the line, the tradition evolved into owning sets of nicely crafted dolls to display and to offer good luck to daughters in the home, and some towns still floated the dolls as a symbolic ceremony, but retrieved them at the end since they were of such high quality.I found a garden called Kairakuen in Ibaraki that does a small nagashibina ceremony during their ume blossom festival, and was very excited to witness the tradition firsthand.  It was quite far from Tokyo, but doable in a day, and I was so glad we were able to make it.  The dolls and boats they floated them in were so beautiful, and they even gave out little tiny boats for the audience members to float after the main dolls were set out.  Afterward we explored the rest of the garden, which was filled with thousands of fragrant  blossoming plum trees, as well as a bamboo and cedar forest. but we’ll save that for another post. -- source link

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