Saturday, May 05, 2012

Boys' Day 2012


Today is Boys' Day in Japan and though some people set up large metal displays of samurai warrior, the most popular decorations are flying carp banners.

Carp are fluttering over the countryside and flying over roofs and outside of apartment windows.

Tetsu and I found a Boys' Day festival in the paper making town and the parks were decorated with pretty handmade carps of all different colors and shapes. At another part of the festival there were traditional carps that the farmers had set up to flutter and reflect in the flooded rice fields.

It must take a lot of work to get all those carp (about 80 of them) stretched from hill to hill but overlooking the tiered rice fields they were lovely.

Here is my own contribution to Boys' Day. I made this little wall hanging a couple of years ago and have shown it before on my blog. My "flying carp" are welcoming people in my entryway this week!

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