Hinamatsuri Party

Yesterday I went to an international event in Honjo. Every year a group of kindly Japanese ladies put on an event for the Gaijin of the area around the time of hinamatsuri. Hinamatsuri is a festival where people who have daughters put traditional Japanese dolls about their houses. It is the girls' festival. (The boys festival is on May 5th, and there is an 'old folks' day too. These days are rather like Mothers' and Fathers' days). Anyway, I went to a convention centre of sorts and learned how to make origami Japanese dolls then ate a lot of food. After that there was a bingo game. Everyone got a prize (I got a blanket).

I had heard there are a lot of foreigners in the area, but had never seen them before. There were a lot of families there where the mother was Chinese, Korean or Thai and the father was Japanese and their kids (who were for the most part very little) were half-and-half. But I didn't know that other than my Chinese student there was another teenage boy in the area who had recently come over from somewhere and was only just learning Japanese. That kid is at Sr. High school, but his Japanese is still very bad. He must have come to Japan very recently. His school life must be so hard.

There was a family where the mother was Russian, and the daughter was a beautiful mix of pale hair and Asiatic face. There was also a whole Peruvian family who seem very good at making merry.

It was not as fun for me as for the families. I was the only person who went alone, and I only knew two people there. But I was there in a 'representative of the JET Programme' kind of role, so I am glad I went.