Today is Tanabata which usually takes place on the seventh day of the seventh month every year. Tanabata is a sweet, little holiday, a lovers’ holiday. Citizens dress in yukata and walk the streets festooned in brightly colored paper stars with streamers hanging from them. Street vendors sell snacks, and men and women of all ages write wishes on pieces of paper and attach them to wishing trees. We have no actual trees in Nishikyō, so most homes attach their wishes to wire stars or wire trees they hang in their homes or outside their businesses.
The story behind Tanabata is a sad tale, a fable thousands of years old about two lovers in the heavens, Orihime and Hikoboshi. The two fall in love and marry quickly, but they become so consumed with each other that they neglect their work and send the heavens into chaos. Orihime’s father, the King of the Sky, prohibits the lovers from seeing one another by separating Orihime and Hikoboshi, one on each side of the Milky Way. Orihime falls into despair, though, so her father relents and lets the two of them meet once per year on the seventh day of the seventh month.