A Taiko Japanese drumming performance entertains those at last year's Tanabata celebration. Photo / Supplied
A Taiko Japanese drumming performance entertains those at last year's Tanabata celebration. Photo / Supplied
There will be no shortage of family-friendly things to do at the Rotorua celebration of a special festival in Japan's calendar.
The 11th Tanabata 2019 - Japanese Star Celebration in Rotorua is being held on July 7.
The event will include an origami and coloured paper decorations workshop, a starquiz, tanabata song, story telling (Tanabata legend, Japanese folk story), and a Taiko Japanese drumming performance.
There will also be hot drinks and refreshments, including Japanese food, for a gold coin donation which will go towards the Japanese Playgroup.
Tanabata - meaning evening of the seventh - is a Japanese star festival derived from the Chinese star festival Qi Xi (The Night of the Sevens).
It celebrates the meeting of Orihime (Vega) and Hikoboshi (Altair).
The Milky Way, a river made from stars that cross the sky, separates these lovers, and they are allowed to meet only once a year on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month of the lunisolar calendar.
In present-day Japan, people generally celebrate this day by writing wishes - sometimes in the form of poems - on small pieces of paper, and hanging them on bamboo with other decorations.
