Japanese Celebrations: Cherry Blossoms, Lanterns and Stars!

Lots of cute pictures. A fun book for kids and adults. It goes through the year starting in January with New Years traditions. I like that the pictures are labeled in english and japanese. All in all, it is a great book to summarize Japanese traditions. I had forgotten about many of the holidays, and it was nice to be reminded of them. I have many friends who live in the US who are Japanese or part Japanese, and I think this book will be great as a baby gift for them.

Such a perfect book to highlight Japanese holidays! We lived in Japan for 3 years and i wanted to keep our kids connected to the holidays they grew up celebrating there. This is a great way to do that. Illustrations are so sweet, and I love that there is kanji in the book as well.

Good for even adults to read this to understand Japanese celebrations before going to Japan. Very understandable for both young and old.

I chose this book because it had hiragana, romaji, and english and looked promising. It was. They also have sheet music styled musical notes (one song) with both english and japanese lyrics. I wish they had more songs and holidays though. I took japanese in high school and know that there are more than covered. Nicely done and worth the current price of ten - eleven dollars.

A very colorful and fun book to learn a different cultures celebrations. You learn the story of the celebration and fun things to do.

Received Japanese Celebrations: Cherry Blossoms, Lanterns and Stars!. Thanks so much.

Very pretty book and delightfully illustrated. Great for use when teaching Japanese culture and celebrations to young school age children.

This book is impossible to find in most book stores. It is nice to have to share with the grand children some of their heritage.

This seems to have been designed as a children's book, but adults interested in Japanese culture can also learn a lot and have fun at the same time.The book makes extensive use of large illustrations, which children would enjoy.The book covers 10 major annual celebrations and numerous other smaller celebrations such as O-Kuizome (Baby's First meal).Names for Japanese items/celebrations are presented in Romaji, Hiragana and English.There are related activities included in the book, such as instructions for making a paper doll for the Doll Festival and song to learn for the Cherry Blossom celebration.There are many opportunities to learn vocabulary, such as zodiac animal names and forms of food and drink.Ultimately the book lacks detail for the adult reader, and content seems to have given way to larger illustrations. There are 9 full page illustrations which contain no text, which equates to 19% of the book. The rest of the book is filled with large illustrations (frequently quarter page or more in size), as a result the actual text content of this book is less than you would expect.Some celebrations only receive a 16 word description, but their illustration takes a quarter of a page (this occurs more than once). Nevertheless, celebrations only mentioned briefly at least alert you to their existence and you could go on to further research them if interested. Who knew there was a festival dedicated to the god of sleep?My score: 4 StarsI took off 1 star because some festivals/celebrations are mentioned extremely briefly.

Bought to give to friends who are leaving Japan and want to remember their time here.