When I think of Easter, I am reminded of the anticipation of opening my Easter basket after Easter Sunday worship. Carefully putting on my white tights, as to not create a run, and the smell of jelly beans and for some reason, circus peanuts wafting in the air. I remember the frantic Easter egg hunt with my cousins, and my mom leaving the peeps out because she liked them hard.
Since Easter is a Christian holiday, you won't find much fanfare regarding the traditional holiday here in Japan. However, you may, right after Valentine's Day, see a few Easter bunny motifs and plastic eggs.
While my husband nor my daughter are Christian, I still wanted to share a bit of my culture with them and taught them about the Easter bunny and some of the activities children enjoy on that day.
One of my favorite memories of Easter was coming down in our brand new Easter dresses and seeing my and my sister's Easter baskets, wrapped up in plastic, and filled to the brim with both traditional and our favorite sweets and snacks. While, my daughter is still too young for sweets, I still got her an "Easter-like" basket, and bought her a special Easter outfit that she could wear on the day. I bought the "basket" at Flying Tiger and the outfit and hat at Nishi Matsuya.
The day before Easter we painted Easter eggs. In America, I told them we dye real hardboiled eggs, but because our daughter is still young, and I don't have any egg dying kits, we'll paint eggs instead. I found these paintable craft eggs at Daiso, and we used a water color set from Seria to paint the eggs.
She enjoyed painting since she is learning the colors, and often should "赤" and "青"! Because we used water colors, it was pretty mess free and I didn't have to worry about anything being stained. She enjoyed painting so much, I let her paint on paper and we made Easter bunnies by gluing a single pom-pom on the back as a tail!
Once the eggs were dry, I placed them in her basket and hung the bunny art up on the wall, and that was waiting for her in the morning!
I had my husband go ahead and hide some eggs. He didn't understand at first and hit them too well! So, she didn't get it at first. So, once we helped her find those, I hid the rest by just throwing them around the field. She loved picking up one, and then immediately finding the next. Finally, we let her open them and she put the stickers in her sticker book.
My husband also enjoyed the egg hunt, and would like to do it again one day outside of Easter! I also hid an Easter egg for him around our apartment. He has yet to find it!
How was your Easter? Anything cool to share? Leave it in the comments below!
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