New Living Space for hiro !!!! -hiro

Good morning, everyone!!! Ok, I think I need to update everyone what I have been doing this passed few weeks.... I have been doing apartment hunting for weeks, and I have to say it wasn't easy to find the right place to live.... I was bit stressed out because it was tough for me to find a good place when I work and do training full time!!! But after all the struggle, I finally found the one that I really liked and moved to my new place this weekend:) So, yeah.... struggle is ooooooover!!!! I have to say it's so nice to have a place where you can call it yours, right? I love decorating house, so I spend all day this Sunday to set up furniture and decorations around the house. The room came our pretty nice and relaxing that I look forward to coming home everyday now!! Nao will be visiting me soon to check out my space, and I'm sure she will like it too. Oh, Jiji, my lovely cat seemed like the new place too and he's been relaxing on my couch. Okidoki, I better get going now because I have a lot to do!! I will talk to you later everyone:) Love, Hiro

Viva Girls! - Nao

Happy Hina Matsuri Day!

Hina Matsuri is the day we celebrate Girls in Japan. This celebration started out as girls just playing with dolls hundreds of years ago. The girls back then played with dolls just like the young kids play with Barbie dolls nowadays. I guess girls back then aren’t that different from girls now. Well, I played with toy cars and airplanes when I was a kid, and when I played with Barbie dolls, it was when I would take them away from my little sister and cut their hair. Yeah, I was in trouble every time I did that. Ha ha. Anyway, March is the beginning of spring in Japan, and there are peach tree blossoms everywhere over there. So, Japanese people began to combine the celebration for girls and peach tree blossoms eventually. This became “Hina Matsuri”. We would decorate our houses with Hina dolls, which are believed to take all the bad luck away from the house. They are beautiful and very detailed. There is a belief about these Hina dolls. If a family doesn’t put the Hina dolls away by the end of March, the girls in the household will marry really late in life. So the mothers of the girls usually put these dolls away before March ends. I think it is very interesting how girls playing with dolls hundreds of years ago, has now become a celebration of girls and Spring. It is also interesting how there is a connection with the dolls and when a girl will get married. I have no idea where the idea originally came from though.

Anyways, boys, don’t worry, we have a cerebration for boys in May as well. Hina Marsuri is not a holiday, but Boy’s Day is. Why? Because May has better weather than March does. A very interesting way of deciding when to celebrate a holiday, huh?

Alrighty, have a wonderful Hina Matsuri… and be nice to girls out there! he he

Hugs,
Nao