Today we celebrated our girls by eating way too much.

Today is Hinamatsuri, also known as Girl’s Day. Traditionally, families with daughters set out dolls that represent the Emperor, Empress and the Imperial court from 1,200 years ago. The dolls are handmade by artisans and it is tradition to start with a small set and then add to it every year. We are cheap and lazy which means we stuck to the original set and never added to it. However, we also carefully avoid any Hina doll artisans shops when we are with the girls.

Akira Kurosawa had a gorgeous scene in his occasionally interesting, often boring film Dreams where Hina dolls came to life and started dancing. (The scene is here, but some moron has added Philip Glass music to it rather than the traditional Japanese music. It still looks great, though.)

It is also tradition to eat Chirashizushi, which we did, but we also added a side dish of fried chicken, honoring our daughters with the ultimate version of surf and turf. The surf and turf dishes were followed by the cake, which She Who Must Be Obeyed spent the better part of the day preparing an shaping like a Hina doll set:

This looks great now but a few minutes later it was nothing but crumbs and licked fingers.

Unfortunately, our bookshelves are full of books, including the small one we used to use to display the dolls. Because of this we didn’t have room to ward off the bad spirits which means we’ll still have to deal with our oldest being a teenager.