Today is 'Green Day', the first public holiday in the series known as Golden Week. Used to be the old emperor's birthday, but he carked it a while back and the new bloke has a different birthday (of course), but the people didnt want to give up this holiday... Ol' Hiro liked trees and stuff, so they re-named the day Green Day and kept it a holiday.
I can see why Japanese people get so excited about Golden Week... for the most part, the idea of having TWO days off in a row is a rare luxury, though people who work in offices often get Saturdays AND Sundays off every week. Wow.
Ask any Japanese in the work force here how many days off per year he gets... but remember to mentally deduct 52 from that number because each and every Sunday is counted... sometimes take off another 52 if he's lucky enough to get Saturdays off too.
Anyway, Golden Week is such a big deal because most people (except shops) get today off where they can sit around and be Green, then next week they get the 3rd off for Constitution Memorial Day (why on earth they devote a public holiday to remembering that America wrote their constitution for them, I dont know), the 5th is Childrens Day where people fly big carp from flagpoles. Yes, thats right, carp. I'll try and get a picture.
The 4th was declared 'Citizen's Holiday' too, in an unchacteristic display of logic by the government, so people can have a long run of holidays together instead of having to go back to work in the middle for a day... now all they need is to declare April 30th a holiday too, so people can actually have a week off instead of a day off, a day at work, the weekend, then three more days holiday.
Still, its a long break indeed for workers here, and many many people are in the habit of taking a sickie on the 30th and really letting their chopsticks down.
22
(The new Emperors Birthday holiday is the 23rd of December, which is close enough to Christmas but the 25th is not a holiday...)
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