{"id":197,"date":"2014-03-04T01:04:31","date_gmt":"2014-03-04T01:04:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/slowsuburbandeath.com\/?p=197"},"modified":"2014-03-04T01:04:31","modified_gmt":"2014-03-04T01:04:31","slug":"girls-day-hina-matsuri-and-my-sister","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/annapirhana.com\/?p=197","title":{"rendered":"Girl’s Day (Hina Matsuri) and my sister"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"hina<\/a><\/p>\n

We used to celebrate the Japanese observation of Girl\u2019s Day (Hina Matsuri) at home by putting up an old wooden doll display and eating special omanju (rice cakes).\u00a0\u00a0 My mother treated this day with such delicacy, and we were never to jump around the doll display or behave in our usual rambunctious manner that might cause the dolls to topple.\u00a0 My sister and I were seasoned at house destruction, setting crayons to wall covering with ease or sliding down three long flights of stairs in our brownstone flat while riding a child\u2019s bathtub, ending our trip by crashing into the front door.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

My mother always had a difficult time taming my sister and I so that we might become proper young girls.\u00a0 I always followed my sister\u2019s lead, and she was a ball of never ending energy.\u00a0 Lisa was smart as a whip, ate faster than I did, got blamed for everything and challenged her Catholic school teachers by tackling forbidden subjects such as Satanism.\u00a0 This made the nuns uncomfortable, and my mother would be summoned to our school to sit through uncomfortable parent\/teacher sessions that she could barely comprehend with her limited grasp of English.<\/p>\n

I fondly recall Lisa\u2019s First Communion at St. Francis Xavier, the companion church to the old Morning Star School in San Francisco.\u00a0 Our Catholic grammar school was pre-dominantly Japanese American and non-Catholic, but the student body was invited to attend this ceremony.\u00a0 Lisa\u2019s short white communion dress and veil stood apart from her other non-Catholic classmates who were dressed in kimonos, and her class was summoned to take a photograph of the event.\u00a0 As each six or seven-year-old student, male and female, calmly stood in a row on the church stairs put their hands together in prayer, the photographer took a short pause before shouting, \u201cLITTLE GIRL…WOULD YOU PLEASE TAKE YOUR FINGERS OUT OF YOUR NOSE?\u201d<\/p>\n

My sister\u2019s version of the prayer pose was to raise her hands high enough so that two fingers would lodge up her nose.\u00a0 The photographer was quick to zero in on my Lisa\u2019s pose and my sister\u2019s teacher, Sister Bridget, was quick to turn around and admonish my sister while my mother hung her head in embarrassment.\u00a0 The final picture was a nice black and white studio quality photo, with my sister hiding behind her prayer pose and a precocious impish grin.<\/p>\n

I doubt my mother\u2019s attempts at Girls Day did much to turn us into proper girls.\u00a0 Still, the rice cakes were certainly worth the effort.<\/p>\n

\"Image\"<\/p>\n

(My Sister and I)<\/p>\n

(c)2014 Slow Suburban Death.\u00a0 All rights reserved<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We used to celebrate the Japanese observation of Girl\u2019s Day (Hina Matsuri) at home by putting up an old wooden doll display and eating special<\/p>\n

Continue readingGirl’s Day (Hina Matsuri) and my sister<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[38,39,43],"tags":[78,89,154,164,217,240,259,265],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/annapirhana.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/annapirhana.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/annapirhana.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annapirhana.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annapirhana.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/annapirhana.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/annapirhana.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annapirhana.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annapirhana.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}