Irrespective of your ethnicity and religious heritage, no matter at what place you live on earth, holidays and festive seasons are completely linked with the foods. Whether you symbolise the foods with festive mood or seasonal treats, you find it hard to resist.
Japanese people also follow the same rule and celebrate each and every festival in own way. There are plenty of food options available during each festive season. If you are going to spend vacation in Japan during any of the festive seasons, take a look at the exclusive dishes that you will not like to miss on the day.
Cherry Blossom Festival: In the months of spring, the whole of Japan is immersed in the beautiful colour of cherry flowers. The cherry blossom festival is one of the most anticipated festive seasons in Japan. With a little bit of transformation in the celebration, people these days soak in the glory of this festival with friends and colleagues. They enjoy food and drink together. It’s common to see food and drink vendors lining the pathways but most of the people go with the homemade Hanami Bento.
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Hanami Bento includes seasonal grilled fish and boiled spring vegetables. Rice is scattered on it and vegetables are cut delicately into subtle Sakura petals shape. Green Yomogimochi and pink designed Kamaboko is mixed to the colourful festive mood. The celebrations start during the lunchtime and goes on for the whole night.
Hina Matsuri (Girl’s Day Festival): Japanese people celebrate March 3 as Girl’s day festival. This special day is celebrated with a few traditional dishes. Hishimochi is one most common food to have on this occasion. It looks lovely with diamond-shaped mochi and pink, white and green layers. Each colour of layer symbolises uniqueness of this day. Pink is for plum blossoming, White signifies snow of diminishing winter season while green stands for fresh and early spring.
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In the early spring, Shiro-zake is the first variety of sake being made available at the start of season. Hina arare is another popular food consumed on this day. The small, pink, white and green ball of crunchy puffed rice that is sweetened with sugar seems to be suiting everybody’s taste buds.
New Year and Christmas festival: Most Japanese people go with the foods, which are considered lucky on the New Year. Some of the most common Japanese food for festive mood on New Year is red snapper, prawn, black soy bean, etc. On the Christmas Day, they prefer to gorge upon different flavours of cakes.
There are some exclusive foods for each festival that augment the celebratory mood of the Japanese people.
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