The Japanese 7-5-3 (shichi go san) Festival
We love exploring the world and we love festivals and celebrations so we thought we would combine the two and find celebrations from all over the world to celebrate with our children. Now, before I talk about our fun day exploring Japanese Shichi Go San (7-5-3) festival I need to do a massive shout out to the Japan Society website where I found out most of my information and downloaded lots of amazing resources. This year (2021) the Festival was on the 15th November.
The festival is a day when Japanese families celebrate the health and happiness of their children aged 3,5 and 7 – and as we have just emerged from our brush with Covid – it seemed like a good time to celebrate. My children are actually 4 and 8 (ooops) but I read that as Freddie is in his fifth year he actually counts and Penny was very happy to enjoy the day too.
Chitose Ame
During the Festival, children receive lucky red and white long sticks of candy called Chitose Ame which means ‘one thousand year sweets’ and is a wish for the children to live long and prosperous lives. We have similar sweets this time of year called candy canes – the perfect red and white colours for luck which the shops are already full of and so I broke the top off them and they were perfect.
I read that the Chitose Ame came in special bags and so, before their isolation ended the kids had a great time decorating their bags ready for the weekend. The bags are decorated with the Japanese number; 7, 5 3 and with cranes, turtles and pine leaves which all represent a long and healthy life.
Kanji Characters
As the kids were stuck indoors this week in quarantine it also seemed like a great time to learn the Japanese characters for 3, 5, 7 and 1000. Not only did they learn to write the numbers but we also found a super song about them! Take yourself to 2.25 in the video to learn to count in Japanese!
Japanese Food and Festival Clothes
A major part of the festival is dressing up and visiting a shrine to receive a blessing from a priest. We don’t have any Japanese shrines near us, but we enjoyed dressing up anyway and thought that we would like to visit a Japanese restaurant instead to enjoy the culture and the food of this amazing place. Our favourite Japanese restaurant in Liverpool is Sapporo Teppanyaki which the kids especially love as you can see the food being cooked in front of them. One of the things I love most about where I live is all of the wonderful different restaurants we have around us.
This Shichi Go San festival was lots of fun to celebrate and the activities were great during the week where we had to stay in to quarantine. It felt extra celebratory to be aloud out at the weekend for the meal and dressing up felt extra good after a week in pyjamas. We have also pretended also pretended to visit Japan and lots of other Asian countries – read all about our visits here.
