Thousands of dolls placed on the stage (Suzaka Art Park / 須坂アートパーク)

In Suzaka city, there are a museum called Suzaka Art Park.
It takes an hour by car from Matsumoto city, and they displays print arts and dolls corrected from all over the places from the world.

But this period, from end of January to  middle to April, Hina dolls are displayed in the most of spaces in the museum.

The largest display had 30 stages, thousands of dolls.




Usually, dolls displayed at home are 15.
It means that there are same numbers of 70 families dolls.

Not only large groups, there were several small sets of dolls.

This set above maybe really old.
I think the dolls in set like this with house is rare, so it maybe made long time ago.

There where a lot of families visiting here and everyone were looking at the largest groups.

There were some Kimono dress that children can wear.
Some kids were wearing them.

At the next building, there was one more large sets of dolls.
There were also thousands of dolls, too.
As there were big windows, the picture become little different.

At the beginning of May, the other festival, Tango no Sekku (端午の節句), will come and other dolls will displayed here.

I would like to go there again.

Thank you for reading!
Have a nice weekend!

A special festival day for the girls. "Hina matsuri / ひな祭り" (Suzaka Art Park / 須坂アートパーク)

March 3rd is a day for girls in Japan.
It is a festival day to wish the girls to grow up safely and healthy.

Few days before this day comes, we displays a dolls of ancient nobles.
These dolls are called "Ohina-sama", which means "small ones".

The festival it self is called "Hina matsuri", which means "A doll (small ones) festival".




It is getting a little rare, but most of families who has girl in Japan has a set of dolls.
My family had them when I was child, too.

The dolls are displayed on the stage like stair ways, and the pictures bellow are the standard ways to set the dolls.

Each dolls has fixed positions.
The highest place are seats for the emperor(お内裏さま) and empress (お雛さま).

At the second row from the upper side, the three court ladies (三人官女) stays.

These ladies holds a tools each, a special pot which pours Japanese rice wine(sake), small dishes to drink sake, and special plate to place the foods. We use these tools when having a wedding ceremony in shrines.

At the third row, five musicians (五人囃子) stays.

As my lends was not wide enough, I only could take four of them...

There were one more musician at left.

Most of the musician dolls had drums and flutes.

Fourth row, the ministers (左大臣と右大臣) stays.

They are the bodyguards for emperor and empress.

At this day, I was in a museum called Suzaka Art Park, and the dolls I liked best was the ministers bellow.

As they were placed a high place and covered by window, it was little difficult to take picture clearly... I can't tell how but It seemed cooler then other ministers in this museum.

At fifth row, three servants (三人上戸) stays.

The long thing a man above hold is an umbrella to shade empress from the sunlight. 

The thing a man above hold is a stand to place empress's Japanese sandal. 

The long thing a man above hold is an umbrella to cover empress from the rain. 

At the bottom row, there are some treasures are set.

The tools in the picture above is a tea set to serve Japanese style tea.

The car in the picture above is for empress to ride.

It is said that this festival's origin were in Heian era(平安時代), about 1200 years ago.

The purpose of this festival is to protect the girls and daughters from evil things, the devils and sicknesses.

The people believed that the dolls will take place if the unhappy things comes.

Today, I introduced the basic information about Hina matsuri.

The pictures were taken at Suzaka Art Park and there were more beautiful and huge displays.

I will introduce it in soon again.

I forgot one more thing.

I realized that Japan google's top page was in Hina maturi picture today.

Please click here to jump to google Japan.

Thank you for reading!!

Good night!!

The kids jumping around (Jigokudani Yaen-Koen/地獄谷野猿公苑)

Even the day was cold, temperature of this day was -6 degrees in Celsius, 21 degrees in Fahrenheit, the kids were playing around joyfilly.

The monkeys in this area have childbirth on April.
As April is a period that warm season starts, it is good for starting child rising.




Since eight or nine months had passed, the kids grown quite big.

It is said that the first monkey who went in the hot spring was a kid monkey.

As the kid monkey knew the hot spring warms himself during a winter time, soon whole monkeys in the troop knew it.

At the beginning, the monkeys were in the nature hot springs, but since human knew their behavior, created artificial hot springs to observe them.

Now we can see the monkeys this close.

Kids were running around really near to human.

The kids seemed so fluffy.

It is still cold here in Japan, but getting warm these days.
The next winter, they will become bigger and grown up.

I want come back to this place again, and meet them.

Thank you for reading!
Have a good weekend!!

How wonderful living with sweet family (Jigokudani Yaen-Koen/地獄谷野猿公苑)

At the park, I saw a lot of families were living together.
They seemed all staying close.

Most of them were grooming each other.

I searched what they are really doing it for.
As monkeys are animals with fur, lice bits them.

Not only bit, the monkeys can be skin diseases by those small lice.
To prevent the harm, even a child monkeys tries to catch lice.

Grooming is also a way to show the affection.
It is said that they only do this to the family or partners.

The winter maybe strict to them, but all seem living happily.
What I thought was that nothing will compare to love for family.

The child monkey maybe got hot staying too long in the hot spring.
Look at his tummy. Isn't it so cute?

Soon started to groom himself.
I thought that the grooming is a thing like drying the body with towel. Human kids maybe running around before doing it. Thinking about this, he is well educated by parents.

Thank you for reading!!
One day to go for weekend.

Good night!