Valley of the dolls

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The month of March is Hina-matsuri, or Japanese doll festival. Since January I'd noticed these creepy looking ( but very expensive) dolls appearing in the shops. On 3 March people celebrate "girl's day", where families with daughters wish for their happiness and healthy growth. Traditionally, families with girls will collect a set of these ornamental dolls for the child for display. The elaborate display represents the Emperor, Empress, attendants, and musicians in traditional court of the Heian period (about a thousand years ago). The old belief was the dolls possessed the power to contain bad spirits.

Last Saturday my friend Sumiko invited me to her village of Achi, which every year has a Hina-matsuri display at locations throughout the village. Unfortunately the weather was atrocious - it was blowing a gale and tipping it down with rain, so I felt a little guilty as Sumiko trudged around giving me a tour. We stopped at several shops, people's homes, galleries and a fancy hotel, all with dolls on display. Some dolls were very old, some modern, all made of many different materials, in many different styles. Some were creepy - others very beautiful. My friend admitted when she was a girl she wouldn't let her mother keep the dolls in her bedroom as they scared her. Whilst I think the dolls are creepy too, I really liked the hina-hanging material dolls, which are a kind of good luck charm hung from the ceiling, like a mobile. These dolls come in all sorts of guises - animals, shapes, fruits - and these really are very pretty.

It was a very cultural weekend all round. On Sunday one of the ladies from my adult teaching group invited me to her uncle's house to take part in a family mochitsuki ceremony. This involved her aunt cooking a huge amount of mochi rice (very glutinous, sticky rice). We then pounded the cooked rice with a heavy wooden mallet (called a kine) in a big wooden traditional mortar (usu). The whole family took it in turns, with one pounding and the other turning and wetting the mochi. This was pretty tricky as if you aren't careful you could easily brain the mochi wetter with the mallet....I was terrified I'd do this when I had a go.

When the mochi ball became a sticky paste, we transferred it to a big bowl and had a delicious spread, eating the fresh mochi balls with ice cream, strawberries and other more adventurous ingredients like sweet shoyu, grated radish and some sort of funny tasting grey powder I didn't catch the name off. By the end of the visit I was covered in mochi and had eaten so much I felt like I was turning into a mochi ball....

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