Month 9, Day 8: Tanabata, the Star Festival

Last night, I celebrated my first Japanese holiday: Tanabata, or the Star Festival. Although the holiday actually originated in China over 2,000 years ago, today it’s still celebrated in Japan on the seventh day of the seventh month—July 7 (or August 7 in some regions, where they use the lunar calendar).

According to legend, back in mythological times, there was a Cowherd Star (called Altair) and a Weaver Star (called Vega). They were supposed to be doing their jobs (as a herder of cattle and a weaver, obviously), but they fell in love and, as often happens with new love, they got a little distracted. Instead of doing their jobs, they spent all their time together, goofing off and doing . . . um . . . other stuff.

The king of the skies was understandably unhappy and decided that the only way to get the lovers back with the program and back to work was to separate them. So he pushed them apart and slapped the Milky Way down between them.

From then on, they were only allowed to be together for one day each year: the seventh day of the seventh month. And that’s what we celebrate on Tanabata (the word means “night of the seventh”).

One of the best-known traditions of Tanabata is for people to write down their wishes on strips of colorful paper called tanzaku and hang them from bamboo branches, along with other decorations. The belief is that if you wish and pray hard enough, your wishes will be granted.

Since things haven’t exactly been going well in my life over the past couple of years, I’m certainly not going to pass up a chance to get a free wish, so I pulled out the construction paper and started writing. Although I don’t have a whole lot of bamboo on my property, I thought the decorations ended up looking just as nice in my tree as they would have on bamboo (see below).

I decorated the yard and said the words of a traditional Tanabata song:

The bamboo leaves rustle

Shaking away in the eaves.

The stars twinkle;

Gold and silver grains of sand.

Then, my boyfriend and I got dressed up and went out for a real Tanabata celebration at—where else?—the local Japanese restaurant.

Over a meal of hibachi steak and seafood with friends, we drank and clapped and caught food in our mouths like children experiencing it all for the first time. It was great—the best night I’ve had in a long, long time.

As a child, I remember reading a story where a little girl wished it could be Christmas every day. Well, after last night, I kind of wish it could be Tanabata every day—although I guess if that happened, there would be a lot of unattended cows and unfinished weaving in the universe.