Festival of Dolls (HinaMatsuri)

On March 3 is the day of Hina Matsuri,mean dolls festival....

In Japan all girls is usually given this set of dolls when they were born, and their parents will put up this set of dolls about two week before march 3...

This dolls are meant to bring health ,intelligence,ect..ect . to the girls..

Now I will let you all know better details about these dolls,with the courtesy of wikipedia...

First Platform:

The top tier holds two dolls representing the Emperor (御内裏様 O-dairi-sama) and Empress (御雛様 O-hina-sama) (dairi means "Imperial Palace", and hina means "girl" or "princess"). The dolls are usually placed in front of a gold folding screen (屏風 byōbu).

Second platform:

The second tier holds three court ladies (三人官女 san-nin kanjo). Each holds a sake-filler.

Third platform:

The third tier holds five male musicians (五人囃子 go-nin bayashi). Each holds a musical instrument except the singer, who holds a fan

Other platforms:

On the fourth, fifth, and lower tiers, a variety of miniature furniture, tools, carriages, etc. are displayed. Two ministers (daijin) may be displayed on the fourth tier: the Right Minister (右大臣 Udaijin) and the Left Minister (左大臣 Sadaijin). The Right Minister is depicted as a young person, while the Left Minister is much older. Also, because the dolls are placed in positions relative to each other, the Right Minister will be on the viewer's left and the Left Minister will be on the viewer's right

Origin and customs:

The custom of displaying dolls began during the Heian period. Formerly, people believed the dolls possessed the power to contain bad spirits. Hinamatsuri traces its origins to an ancient Japanese custom called hina-nagashi (雛流し, hina-nagashi? lit. "doll floating"), in which straw hina dolls are set afloat on a boat and sent down a river to the sea, supposedly taking troubles or bad spirits with them. The Shimogamo Shrine (part of the Kamo Shrine complex) in Kyoto celebrates the Nagashibina by floating these dolls between the Takano and Kamo Rivers to pray for the safety of children. Also people have stopped doing this now because of fishermen catching the dolls in their nets. They now send them out in to the sea, and when the spectators are gone they take the boats out of the water and bring them back to the temple and burn them.
The customary drink for the festival is amazake, a sweet, non-alcoholic version of sake made from fermented rice; the customary food is colored arare, bite-sized crackers flavored with soy sauce. A soy sauced based soup is also served containing clams still in the shell. Clam shells in the food are deemed as the symbol of a united and peaceful couple, because a pair of clam shells can closely fit to each other, and no other shells than its original pair can get fixed.