Kindergartens and other preschools in Japan always hold an annual festival, often coinciding with the national holiday, Culture Day, November 3. Anri's Kindergarten, Enpuku, always has their festival on Culture Day itself, and Anri participated in it for the first



The day began with the kids from all classes carrying their own homemade portable shrines, called omikoshi around the block. The portable shrine, while centered around Shintoism, is carried by the kids more to mimic the tradition of carrying shrines at festivals, rather than to perform a religious ritual. And the kids' own shrines are all based on things appealing to kindergarteners. Anri's class, the "Dandelion" class, had their shrine based on some kind of crayon cartoon character.

After the carrying of the shrines, the kids arrive back at the kindergarten and operate vendor stalls, selling toys, homemade crafts, and especially food to all the parents and other guests. Anri's stall was popular enough to sell out of toys very quickly.

The festival is most popular with visiting adults, as there is a room where one can buy hand-me-down clothes and other items at very cheap prices. Tomomi got a great little dress for Anri for around 50 cents. All the good stuff goes quickly there.

The festival ends with everyone having lunch in the yard. Anri was asleep in the car as soon as Tomomi pulled out of the parking lot.

Anri started attending daily kindergarten on Saturday, April 7th. Beginning with an "entrance ceremony", on Saturday, it has, since then, been lots of fun.

The kindergarten is Enpuku Kindergarten, a popular and quite large Buddhist Temple-based school with a well-known elderly priest as its spiritual leader. Though the place is temple based, the curriculum is largely secular. All the kids must arrive in their formal uniform. Once through the gate they change into their play clothes, which are another kind of uniform. Before leaving, they must change back into the formal uniform. Since Anri loves to put on dresses -- sometimes mutliple layers at once -- we figure all this changing of clothes will be easy for her!

All classes are named after flowers. Anri's is tanpopo, Japanese for "dandelion". A bus rolls nearby to pick Anri up every morning and take her to the kindergarten. The bus has a name too: the "tulip" bus. It has tulips painted all over it. Seeing the kids wearing their little hats riding on this bus is the cutest sight to see!

On Tuesday, December 5, Anri had her big interview at Enpuku Kindergarten (link in Japanese only). She dressed up in a nice black dress with white flowers, met the principle of the school and was a very good little girl. Sort of, anyway.



The interview started with the kids just playing in the playroom, both with teachers and with other kids. Then, one by one, with parents in tow, each child went off for a short private interview. Anri properly said "hello" and told the principal her name, both in Japanese. Barring bad behavior on Anri's part, we went home thinking it was a good bet they'd take her.

They did. We got the letter today!