Hinamatsuri

Hinamatsuri means Dolls festival and is the day where parents set up beautiful doll displays as a manner of praying for their daughters growth and happiness.
The display pictures the emperor and the empress of the Heian period (794-1185) and their servants, besides smaller symbolic items such as different kinds of food, peach blossoms and miniature furniture.
A good colleague of Henrik invited us home for dinner this day, which gave us a chance to see one of these displays on close range. They are beautiful! It was also a great way for us, to be acquainted once more with the Japanese hospitality.

Earlier, we have mentioned that we thought our biggest challenge in Japan, would be to feel integrated, as the Japanese are known as reserved people with a very different culture. We must correct these thoughts. We feel truly overwhelmed by the Japanese people warmth and ability to make us feel welcome. Everywhere we turn, people are ready to go out of their way to help us, in a very polite friendly way that can only inspire us.
We do not feel alienated (except for when we look at our Alien registration card title) and any questions we might have are always answered with respect, even though they must seem silly to Japanese. We sense by now, that our time here in Koriyama will work out just fine.

The visit to the colleagues' house was our first visit as guests in a traditional Japanese home, so therefore it was quite exciting to see how it would all turn out. We were very relieved to find out that it was really relaxed and we had not needed to worry at all. We had a lovely, relaxed evening and really enjoyed the company of Henriks colleague and his wife. We had many inspiring conversations about travelling as they both seem to love travelling just as much as us, and they kindly gave us some good advices according to life in Koriyama (We can find the vegetable market in Koriyama now, yeaah).
We had a feast of a dinner with many different starters, a tasty meal of sushi and finally a delicious Hinamatsuri-cake. We also tasted some of the special small cakes traditionally eaten for Hinamatsuri: tamagomata made with egg and sesame and sakura-mochi which is bean paste-filled rice cakes with cherry leaves.

A big surprise was is, that we actually felt more at home at the colleagues' house, than we do in our own apartment. The reason was many Danish things and designs decorating the living room, and the fact that our own things are still wiggling on the waves towards Japan.

By the way, if you ever set up a display for your daughter during Hinamatsuri, be sure to take it down right after the 3rd of March, unless you want your daughter to marry late.