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Rising Sun > Life > Holiday in Japan
When you'll stay in Japan, I think that you would be busy by your jobs or your study weekday and you would travel weekend or consecutive holidays. Do you want to know Japanese holidays to plane your travel? So I would like to write Japanese national holidays on this page. I hope that it would help you. Of cause, if you have a lot of home works, the holidays would help you also.
At first, I would like to write every Japanese national holidays on the below table. Certainly, we don't need to work and study at the holidays, even if the days are weekday.
| National holiday | Date | Origination |
|---|---|---|
| New Year's Day | Jan 1st | It's the day to celebrate the beginning of the New Year. |
| Coming-of-Age Day | Second Monday of January | It's the day to celebrate the people who are 20 years old. The origin was the Genpuku, which was the ceremony to celebrate a young man's coming of age at Sho-Shogatsu, so the Coming-of-Age Day was in January fiftieth few years ago. |
| National Foundation Day | February 11th | It's the day to bring up Japanese patriotism, and it came from the fact that the legendary first emperor Shinmu acceded to the throe in 660 B.C. |
| Vernal Equinox Day | Vernal Equinox Day (Around March 21st) | It's the day to praise the natures and love every living thing. |
| Showa Day | April 29th | At beginning, the day was the national holiday to celebrate the birthday of Emperor Showa. But after the emperor passed away, the mean of the national holiday changed to think the Showa age when Japan revived over violently changing the days and consider the future of Japan. |
| Constitution Memorial Day | May 3rd | It's the day is to expect the growth of the country by the enforcement of Japanese constitution in 1947. |
| Greenery Day | May 4th | The Emperor Showa loved the natures, so it's the Greenery day to foster our warm-heart by gratitude for the nature during communing with the nature. |
| Children's day | May 5th | It's the day to feel thankful for our mother and pray for our children's happiness with their personality. And it's connected with the Tango-no-Sekku. |
| Marine Day | the third Monday of July | It's the day to fell thankful to the favor of the sea and hope the prosperity of sea country Japan by the fact that the Emperor Maiji returned to Yokohama port from Tohoku area in July 20th. |
| Respect-for-the-aged | the third Monday of September | It's the day to celebrate the longevities and to hold the aged who did their best for the society for long time in high esteem. And the movement came from a village, and the slogan was "respect our aged, make our village by their wisdom". |
| Autumnal Equinox Day | Autumnal Equinox Day (Around September 23rd) | It's the Autumnal Equinox Day. And we respect our ancestries and think of them. |
| Health-Sports Day | The second Monday of October | It's the day to build up our strength. And the date was the beginning day of Tokyo Olympics in 1946. |
| Culture Day | November 3rd | It's the day when a Japanese constitution, which considered peace and culture in 1946, promulgated. At that day, we love the peace and make progress our cultures. |
| Labor Thanksgiving Day | November 23rd | It's the day to thank for each other and celebrate our productions and to respect our labor connecting with the festival "Niiname-Sai" that Japanese emperor thanked for our harvest before. |
| The Emperor's Birthday | December 23rd | It's the birthday of present Japanese emperor. |
The number of Japanese national holidays is the biggest number that is 15 days from 2007 around the advanced techniques countries. So it's an interesting fact… Because of Japanese are called workaholic.
The transferred national holiday is the holiday. If the Sunday is the national holiday, it makes the next Monday is a holiday.
General Japanese companies and schools usually adopt Five-Day Workweek. So we have two days for weekend each week. If we have any transferred holidays or Happy Monday, we can enjoy three days weekend. In additionally, the Happy Monday is one of the national holidays on the special Monday.
I list Japanese happy Mondays below.
General Japanese shops surely work every weekend except banks. Therefore, it's easy to throw any parties weekend, the reason is possible to buy some foods and beers for it always. On the other hands, the stuffs at the shops would be required to work every weekend, so if you plane that you'll work at any shops, you'll lose your weekend and national holidays.
When could we have long consecutive holidays to travel around in Japan? So, I would like to describe three major consecutive holidays, which are "The end and beginning of the year", "The Golden Week" and "The Bon holiday period". At this time, a lot of Japanese travel around, and our hotels and tickets are sold out soon, so we need to book early.
The year-end and new-year is the long consecutive holidays and the period is from December 29th to January 1st. The General schools and companies don't work at the consecutive holidays. In additionally we can enjoy on of the biggest event "Shogatsu" from December 31st to January 1st. So don't forget the Shogatsu in Japan.
The period is usually from April 29th to May 5th, but it depends on the weekend. The Golden Week has four national holidays, which are Showa Day (April 29th), the Constitution Memorial Day (May 3rd), Greenery Day (May 4th) and Children's Day (May 5th). And a lot of people have a short vacation by their paid vacation. It's so difficult to have the vacation for students, but it's the chance to have a vacation for a week for workers.
A lot of companies have a short vacation and the term would be from three days to five days by august 15th as the middle of the consecutive holidays. Japanese call it Bon Holidays Period, and we used to go back our grandparents' house, but the number of Japanese who travel abroad recently increases. And some of companies have the term when we have a short vacation from August to September. So the period doesn't fix comparing to old ages.
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