Festival of Seven Herbs ~ January 7

Nanakusa no sekku

I'm not Japanese so bear with me.  I've found a couple different versions (names of the festive and of the food eaten) but it's basically the same so if I get it a little mixed up please forgive me.  One site I found called this day the "festival of the young herbs" or Wakana-setsu.  It was also referred to as Jin-jitsu or "Man (human) Day".  So, you do understand the confusion.


They all agreed that the tradition of the day is to eat a rice porridge that contains the seven herbs or grasses pictured above.  They are Japanese parsley, shepherd's purse, jersey cudweed, chickweed, henbit, turnip, and daikon.


The dish, nanakusa gayu, looks a bit bland to me,

but the belief is that eating it will bring you health and longevity.

December 22 ~ Haiku Poetry Day

Haiku is a form of traditional Japanese poetry that adheres to strict rules. The entire poem is short containing only 17 syllables in 3 lines. The first line must be 5 syllables, the second lines is 7, and the last line is 5 again, giving the poem a graceful meter. Traditionally the poetry will make reference to the season, and most often it pertained to winter which is why this holiday is on the Winter Solstice.

Obviously well known traditional Japanese Haiku when translated to English will not necessarily have 17 syllables, but by reading some of them, you will get the idea of the imagery associated with this form of poetry.

* Night; and once again,

* the while I wait for you, cold wind

* turns into rain.

Masaoka Shiki

* The crow has flown away:

* swaying in the evening sun,

* a leafless tree.

Soseki Natsume

* The moment two bubbles

* are united, they both vanish.

* A lotus blooms.

Kijo Murakami

To learn more about Haiku, or to learn to write some of your own, try some of these books available at Amazon.