Koi Nobori

Children's Day in Japan is approaching (May 5th) and that means carp windsocks (or koi nobori in Japanese) can be seen all around our neighborhood. Matthew admires some of them.

Children's Day celebrates children of course, and the joy and happiness that comes with childhood. People hang the carp windsocks at their homes around Children's Day and each fish represents a family member. The big black one is the father, the bid red one is the mother and then there are smaller blue or pink (or other colored) fish to represent the children. I bought a little blue and pink fish at the market, but I didn't get the black and red mom and dad fish. Our poor koi nobori are orphans. Oh well. Here is a picture of some of the windsocks hanging at a neighbors house: Dad fish, Mom fish, little boy fish. :)
There is a little preschool by our house that has about twenty little koi nobori of all different colors strung up across their play area. It was so cute - like the twenty little ones who play there. I wish I had gotten a picture.

BIG koi nobori hang across this river near our neighborhood. From far away they don't look very big.

Even the close up pictures can't really capture the scale, but they are big. Trust me.

When the wind blows it looks like they are swimming.

So many of them!

We made some of our own at home a few days ago.
I got the printable to make them HERE.

Anna's fish never got streamers since she went and hid it somewhere in the house after it got to this point and I didn't find it for a few days. I think they had fun coloring them though.