{"id":62,"date":"2009-03-26T08:05:15","date_gmt":"2009-03-26T12:05:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/japanese\/?p=62"},"modified":"2018-07-27T17:55:25","modified_gmt":"2018-07-27T17:55:25","slug":"japanese-cuisine-hina-matsuri-food","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/japanese\/japanese-cuisine-hina-matsuri-food\/","title":{"rendered":"Japanese Cuisine: Hina Matsuri Food"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Hina Matsuri (<span class=\"t_nihongo_kanji\"><strong>\u96db\u796d\u308a<\/strong><\/span>) is a doll festival in which multiple dolls are displayed and presented to young girls as gifts.\u00a0 This tradition goes back to the time when Japanese people believed that dolls had the power to contain evil spirits within the doll, so that the young girl would not be harmed by the evil spirit.\u00a0 In traditional times, when child mortaltity rates were high, parents believed that presenting these dolls would prevent illness and other misfortune from befalling the child.\u00a0 However, the dolls had to be taken down from display no longer than a week of the festival.\u00a0 The superstition is that the young girl will have difficulty getting married if the dolls are displayed in public for too long.<\/p>\n<p>One of the things I looked forward to as a young child was the food served at the Hina Matsuri (<span class=\"t_nihongo_kanji\"><strong>\u96db\u796d\u308a<\/strong><\/span>) festival.\u00a0 Hishimochi (<span class=\"t_nihongo_romaji\"><em><strong>\u3072\u3057\u3082\u3061<\/strong><\/em><\/span>) is a tri-colored rice cake in the shape of a diamond.\u00a0 The diamond shape of the cake is supposed to represent fertility.\u00a0 The usual colors for hishimochi (<span class=\"t_nihongo_romaji\"><em><strong>\u3072\u3057\u3082\u3061<\/strong><\/em><\/span>) are pink, white and green.\u00a0 The pink dye comes from crushing plum flowers and the white dye derives from crushing water chestnuts.\u00a0 The green dye is made from shrubs.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m a picky about sushi, but I happen to like the chirashizushi (<strong>\u3061\u3089\u3057\u5bff\u53f8<\/strong>).\u00a0 Chirashizuki (<strong>\u3061\u3089\u3057\u5bff\u53f8<\/strong>) literally means &#8220;scattered sushi&#8221;.\u00a0 It&#8217;s fast and easy to make.\u00a0 Just get some rice mixed with vinegar and sugar and mix in some vegetables.\u00a0 It&#8217;s not your typical sushi (<strong>\u3059\u3057<\/strong>) in the sense that you wrap the rice and vegetables in seaweed.\u00a0 Like the name implies, chirashizuki (<strong>\u3061\u3089\u3057\u5bff\u53f8<\/strong>) is literally a bowl of rice with some raw fish and vegetables.<\/p>\n<p>For drinks, you&#8217;ll find people sipping shirozake (<strong>\u767d\u9152<\/strong>), which is a sweet, white colored sake (<strong>\u9152<\/strong>).\u00a0 Shirozake (<strong>\u767d\u9152<\/strong>) is made from malt rice and liquor.\u00a0 It&#8217;s really pulpy, so sometimes you&#8217;ll see people scoop it up with a scoop instead of drinking it.\u00a0 Shirozake (<strong>\u767d\u9152<\/strong>) is meant to symbolize the desire for purity and health of the young girl.\u00a0 Of course, the child isn&#8217;t supposed to drink it, but the parents and grandparents often do so.<\/p>\n<p>I dedicate this post to all the young girls out there who are trying to reach their highest potential and\u00a0fulfill their dreams.\u00a0 Keep at it or in Japanese, Ganbatte! (<strong>\u304c\u3093\u3070\u3063\u3066<\/strong>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hina Matsuri (\u96db\u796d\u308a) is a doll festival in which multiple dolls are displayed and presented to young girls as gifts.\u00a0 This tradition goes back to the time when Japanese people believed that dolls had the power to contain evil spirits within the doll, so that the young girl would not be harmed by the evil&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"post-item__readmore\"><a class=\"btn btn--md\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/japanese\/japanese-cuisine-hina-matsuri-food\/\">Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2726],"class_list":["post-62","post","type-post","status-publish","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-hina-matsuri-food"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/japanese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/japanese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/japanese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/japanese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/japanese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/japanese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6258,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/japanese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62\/revisions\/6258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/japanese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/japanese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/japanese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}