By Avi Landau
It is customary for Japanese families with daughters to pack up and put away the Hina Doll sets they had been displaying for the March 3rd Doll festival on the VERY NEXT DAY after the festival (March 4th). You might notice how in a strangely similar fashion most of the Santa-Sans and other X-Mas decorations which could be seen around Tsukuba leading up to Christmas Day will have been whisked out of sight by the end of December 26th, as most Tsukubans ( and Japanese in general) start getting down to the very serious business of preparing for O-Shogatsu, the Japanese New Year’s festival.