the Japanese Doll Festival

Such beautiful dolls…only $1,000. Quite a deal, I swear. 🙂

Anyhow, today is the Doll Festival, and anyone with a young, unmarried daughter is probably celebrating. The dolls represent the Emperor, the Empress and their attendant and musician, dressed in traditional clothing from around 1000.

There can be up to several rows of dolls and household items like a mirror stand and utensils for a tea ceremony (my photo only shows three tiers).

The host family I lived with in Nagoya had two small daughters, and even though they were about 5 and 7 years old, these girls knew exactly where to put everything (and trust me, there’s a lot of stuff that comes with the dolls).

Apparently, there is a superstition that the faster you can get it done, the faster you’ll get married…all I can say about that is…those girls are going to be married pretty darn young!