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About Tango no Sekku (Boys' Day) 端午の節句について |
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Site
1 |
Good brief
explanation of Children's Day
in English at the "Kids Web Japan"
website's "Annual Calendar"
page. |
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Site
2 |
Detailed
explanation of Boys' Day in English
at the "Ginkoya" website. (This page might appear
with very small fonts. If so, click on "View" in the
task bar, click on "Font size" and change it to a larger
size.) |
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Site
3 |
Kodomo no hi web page in English at
the "WikiPedia" website. |
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Site 4 |
Koinobori/Boys' Day web page in English at the "Japanese
American National Museum" website. |
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Site 5 |
Nice
Q&A page about "こどもの日"
in Japanese at the website of
a secondary school
personal computer club
(文化女子大付属杉並中高校パソコン同好会). |
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Site 6 |
"端午の節句" page in Japanese
at the "ウィキペディア"
website. |
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Site 7 |
"端午の節句" page in Japanese
at the "日本文化いろは事典"
website. |
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Site 8 |
Good
explanation about "端午の節句"
with some historical back ground in Japanese
from the website of "晃月人形," a
Japanese doll manufacturer. |
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Site 9 |
"端午の節句"
page in Japanese from the website of "平安武久", a
Japanese doll manufacturer. |
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Site 10 |
According to
a press release ("２００７年 五月人形商戦 今年のトレンドは?") at the Japan
Doll Manufacturers Association (日本人形協会) website, about
570,000 boys were born in Japan in 2006 and 400,000
(70%) of them are the first son of the family. This
year, the doll manufacturing industry is expecting a
market of about 4.6 billion yen (about US$ 384
million!!) for what they call May dolls (五月人形), which
include miniature samurai helmet set, miniature samurai
armor set and others. Most popular set is the samurai
helmet set (70%) followed by the samurai armor set
(25%). Here are the price ranges for these sets:
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Samurai helmet set |
JY 80,000 - JY
200,000 |
US$670 -
US$1,670 |
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Samurai armor set |
JY 200,000 - JY
300,000 |
US$1,670 -
US$2,500 |
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Tango no Sekku (Boys' Day)
photos 端午の節句の写真 |
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Site 11 |
Koinobori photo slideshow at the "flickr.com"
website. Go to this page and click on "View as
slideshow." Some are not koinobiri photos, but most of
them are pretty good. |
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Site
12 |
Nice koinobori photos from a
personal webpage (Mon's
ホームページ).
You can click on each photo to enlarge. |
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Site 13 |
Some koinobori photos in
Okinawa from the website of "OkinawaWeb.com." |
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Site 14 |
Some
koinobori photos in Osaka from the website of "Osaka
Prefectural Government." |
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Site 15 |
Koinobori catalogue at the "秀光人形工房"
website. The lengths vary from 4 meters upto 7 meters. |
Site
16/
Site 17 |
Catalogue pages of miniature samurai
helmets and armors at the "広田屋"
website. You can enlarge each image by clicking on it.
Check out the prices as well. |
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Site
18 |
A catalogue
of table size koinobori at the
website of "三池の鯉のぼり." |
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Site 19 |
A photo of a
sales floor with many Boys' Day dolls on display
at the "広田屋"
website. |
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Tango no Sekku (Boys' Day)
activities 端午の節句の
アクティビティ |
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Site
20 |
Downloadable Kabuto (samurai helmet) paper-craft
with instructions from the
"Yamaha Motor Company" website. Very nice. |
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Site 21 |
Downloadable
Yoroi (samurai
armor) paper-craft
with instructions from the "kids.nifty.com"
website. Very nice. |
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Site 22 |
Downloadable
Koinobori paper-craft
with instructions from the "kids.nifty.com"
website. Very nice. |
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Site 23 |
Origami
kabuto (samurai helmet) instructions
at the "高井くんのおりがみ教室"
website. If you use
a large sheet of paper or newspaper,
you can actually wear it. |
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Site 24 |
Downloadable MP3 music files
of Boys' Day related songs at the "太郎鯉"
website. No. 2, 5 & 6 of the list are the traditional
children's songs. To save these MP3 files, move the
cursor on the "ダウンロード"
button, right-click, and select "Save Target As."
No.2 こいのぼり（やねより…） -
http://www.tarogoi.com/info/sound/koinobori1.mp3
No.5 こいのぼり（いらかの…）
-
http://www.tarogoi.com/info/sound/koinobori3.mp3
No.6 せいくらべ（はしらの…） -
http://www.tarogoi.com/info/sound/seikurabe.mp3
The
lyrics and midi file for No. 2, 5 & 6 songs are
available at the following web pages of the "なつかしい童謡・唱歌・わらべ歌・寮歌・民謡・歌謡"
website.
No. 2 こいのぼり（やねより…）-
http://www.mahoroba.ne.jp/~gonbe007/hog/shouka/koinobori02.html
No. 5 こいのぼり（いらかの…）-
http://www.mahoroba.ne.jp/~gonbe007/hog/shouka/koinobo.html
No. 6 せいくらべ（はしらの…）-
http://www.mahoroba.ne.jp/~gonbe007/hog/shouka/seikurabe.html |
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Site 25 |
An online
koinobori game at the "サイバー日本の行事"
website (very silly game). The object of this game is to try to keep the koinobori flying up in the air as long as possible.
Click on "start" and a red bar, a blue bar, a koinobori
and a cat appear. The red bar is the wind velocity
indicator. The blue bar indicates the strength of the
rope that holds the koinobori. In order to keep your
koinobori flying, you move your pointer/arrow in a
circle in the screen to create some wind. If you move
the pointer/arrow too fast, the rope becomes weak which
will be indicated by the blue bar becoming short, and
eventually the rope will break and wind will blow the
koinobori away. So you need to move the pointer/arrow in
a certain manner so that you can maintain the proper
wind velocity. But that's not all. There is a cat that
tries to catch the koinobori. If the koinobori is too
low, then the cat will catch the koinobori. So you need
to keep the koinobori high enough from the cat. When you
start the game, the date is set on April 21. The longer
you keep the koinobori up, the closer the date and the
time will get to May 5. So the person who gets closest
to May 5 is the winner of the game. You can register
your record to compete with other people on the
Internet. (Shock wave plug-in required) |
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