Children's Day / Tango no Sekku
Kodomo-no-hi(Children's Day)
May 5 is Kodomo-no-hi. Originally it was called Boy's Festival and was for celebrating boys' growing up, but now it has become a day to celebrate children in general. On this day, families with boys set out Boy's Festival dolls, patterned after warriors and heroes, and fly carp streamers. Carp have the strength to even swim up waterfalls and have long been taken as symbols of success in life. The day also features the practice from long ago of taking a bath with flag, reputed to have medicinal effect, and it is also essential to make an offering of the traditional Japanese confections of rice dumplings wrapped in bamboo leaves and rice cakes wrapped in oak leaves.