The Girl’s Day

 Japanese people celebrate Girl’s Day, also known as Doll’s Festival, on March 3. In my house my mother-in-law has been displaying a small box with two Japanese dolls inside since the day our daughters were born. She always buys a bag of traditional Japanese junk food, called ‘’Arare’’ to be eaten on that day. This year she bought the food and also two cans of fruit juice to decorate the box.

I started eating the food and drinking the juice secretly before March 3. Two days before the celebration I told my student about what I was doing, and he compared me to the boys who were messing around the sushi at the Sushi restaurants in Japan. I did not care much and I gave him some of the food from the bag. When the food finished and the bag got empty, I decided to collect some small dirty stones from the garden and put them in the bag, of course I closed the bag back with some tape.

On March 3 my mother-in-law opened the bag in front of my daughters and she had a big surprise when she saw the small stones. She told my daughters the bag had different kinds of ‘’Arare’’, because they all looked brown like chocolate. My daughters refused to eat the food and she finally realized that was a prank, and she also realized that the juice was not juice either, it was water. On one hand that was not a nice thing to do, but on the other hand I was able to teach my daughters that pranks are not good things to do and that they should not do it at all! But it was really fun to see Obachan staring at the stones in a white plate on the table.

Dia das meninas

Dia 3 de Marco e o dia de Hina Matsuri. E o Festival das Bonecas e Dia das Meninas no Japao. Minha sogra sempre exibi uma caixa com duas bonecas que simbolizao o Dia das Meninas. Todo ano ela decora a caixa com bebida e comida para criancas Este ano como de costume eu decidi fazer uma brincadeira de mau gosto com as bonecas.

Eu comi a comida ARARE que estava na sacola plastica juntamente com um dos meus alunos, em seguida substitui a comida por predras pequenas do jardim e usei uma fita adesiva para fecha-la. Tambem bebi as duas latas de suco que estavam junto da caixa de bonecas e em seguida substitui o suco por agua. No dia 3 de Marco a sogra abriu a sacola com o ARARE na frente de minhas fihas, colocando a comida em um pratinho. Ela se surpreendeu com a cor e disse que eram bolas de chocolate, minhas filhas nao comeram o que ela havia oferecido para elas. Foi nessa hora que ela descobriu que tudo era uma brincadeira de mau gosto que eu havia feito. O que fiz nao foi algo honesto mas com isso eu pude mostrar para minhas filhas que brincadeiras de mau gosto nao e engracado e que elas nunca facam este tipo de brincadeira. Mas foi muito emgracado ver a cara de surpresa da sogra olhando para as pedras no prato.