Today I went to a birthday party! It was a combined party for the nephew and father of my friend, Mariko. Their birthdays are only a few days apart, so they went to a sushi restaurant to celebrate and they invited me to come along! It was so much fun!
I've been to birthday parties before in Japan, but never to a one-year-old's. Number one is special in Japan. During the day today, Grandma, Mom and baby made mochi (rice...pudding...sticky rice stuff). That's a traditional thing to do. When they made it, they used ten cups of rice. Ten in Japanese is "ishyo", which also means forever. So using 10 cups is significant and they do it to wish the baby a long, good life.
Then the fun begins! My friend Mariko bought baby Mitsukun a backpack. It was bright orange and very cute and he was wearing it when he arrived. Grandma also brought all the mochi they had made, which she said was also around ten kilograms. And then, the traditional thing to do is combine the two gifts and see how much baby can carry! Well, Mitsukun WEIGHS 10 kilos, so he had a difficult time at first when they put it all in. After that though, I thought he did extraordinarily well! I think he could carry half anyway, which I thought was mighty impressive. If I had to carry half my body weight...well, let's just say no one could make that much mochi! I didn't know about this traditional birthday ceremony, but I thought it was fun and interesting.
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