Tanabata | 七夕🎋 | Japanese Podcast with Hana #4

Hello everyone! Thank you for coming to the Learn Japanese with Hana podcast. This podcast is for people who are learning Japanese. I send Japanese culture, news, my personal experiences, etc. in Japanese. How are you all doing recently? People who are working a lot, people who are studying hard as students, people who are studying Japanese, I think there are a lot of people. Today's theme is Tanabata. In Japan, July 7th is Tanabata. Do you know what Tanabata is? Tanabata is a day when you write a wish on colorful paper and ask for it to come true. And this has a pretty old history. The general Tanabata story is the story of a woman named Orihime and a man named Hikoboshi. These two used to work before they got married, but they fell in love and got married. After that, they stopped working at all. And the person who was angry at it left them on both ends of the river and never saw them again. But I felt sorry for them, so the person who left them was able to see them once a year. This is the story of the legend. This is a Chinese legend, and it has been transmitted to Japan, and this story and culture have spread in Japan as well. What has been transmitted to Japan is that there was a time called the Nara period, and it was said that it was transmitted to Japan around 710 to 794. Also, Tanabata used to be something that nobles and great people were familiar with, but after that, it spread all over Japan and everyone began to enjoy it. And now, how do you spend this Tanabata day? You write a wish on a piece of paper called a tanzaku, and there is a bamboo, and you decorate it with a bamboo stick. This is a wish to reach heaven, and children often do this. I remember doing this when I was in kindergarten or elementary school. I think everyone was probably dreaming of the future, or dreaming of becoming a sports player. I don't remember what I wrote at all. And there are events at shopping malls and various places in the city. So there, children write various wishes and decorate them. And when I was in elementary school, I remembered that on Tanabata day, there were colorful star-filled jellies as a snack for lunch. Snacks and desserts were not something that was available every day, so I remembered that on the day it came out, I was very young. And Tanabata is a festival held in many areas. This is like a festival. There is a famous Tanabata festival in Sendai. At this festival, the city is colorful and there is a parade. Events are held like that. In Japan, every year on July 7th, Tanabata day, people write their wishes and pray for them to come true. Various events and parades are held. This time I talked about Tanabata. It's an old story, so there are various books on how it was told and how it was transmitted. There are various books on Tanabata, but I think it would be good if you could remember that it has been passed down from China and still remains as a cultural tradition. If you see Tanzaku in Japan, it's not just that the mysterious colorful paper is hung on the leaves, but if you look at it around July, I hope you will know that it had such a meaning. That's all for this time. Is there an event or tradition in your country to make such a wish? If so, please let me know in the comments. Thank you for listening to the end. See you in the next podcast. See you soon.