7-5-3 year festival

If you visit Japanese shrines in November, you would come across  to see children in beautiful kimono. This is the Japanese traditional event called Shichi-go-san.
Japanese parents take their children, three, five and seven years old to shrines, to show thanks to gods their growth and to pray their bright future.
The age of three means that they have grown as to tie their hair, five means to wear hakama, a Japanese skirt, seven means to tie their sash.
To tell the truth, this event is not for the children but for the parents. Young parents are frantically busy to do this event as to prepare the kimono, to dress their children in kimono, to take them to shrine, to take photo, to have a lunch with their parents and children.
The child of himself ( herself) are excited in an extraordinary event at first but soon get tired and demand to take the kimono off ASAP.
In that cases, young parents persuaded them that if they are gentle, they would get Shitoseame, a special candy for Shichigosan.
By the way, this girl looks so delightful as she can get Chitoseame and a pink balloon in shape of a heart as the present from the shrine.
In thirty years, these children would be grown up, and take their children to shrine and realize what their parents did for them.  Shichigosan is the very good custom for parents and children for Japanese to pass down to the next generation.