When kids are three, five, and seven, we celebrate their health and survival—not on the birthday, but sometime during that year. We go to shrine with a kimino on the children, and have special things to eat related to longevity. There's a long, special kind of candy that symbolizes that hope for long life. This tradition comes from long ago, when many children died before those birthdays."

Birthday profile:
Tomoaki Watanabe
"On the seventh day of the new year, people make a special kind of porridge, using seven kinds of vegetables and herbs. Kids who are turning seven that year go around to neighborhoods to get porridge from many homes, bit by bit. That's how we celebrate those children's longevity or health."