Japanese | Word of the Day

Hello friends,
Todays word will be in relation to the upcoming holidays set to take place in Japan. If you have read my previous post about the new era, 令和/reiwa, then you may be aware of its significance in the days ending out April. Moreover, there are several other sequential holidays coming in a block known as "ゴールデンウイーク/golden week", which will be the topic for todays entry.

So, since there is no kanji to break down, and I've discussed the purpose of katakana in a previous post, we will discuss the nature of festivities that happen during this block of time.

Golden Week
There are 4 national holidays that fall within Golden week between the end of April and beginning of May.

• 昭和の日/Showa Day(4/29): Former Emperor Showa's Birthday
• 健保記念日/Constitution Day(5/3): On this day in 1947, the constitution(co-written by American forces) was signed into law.
• みどりの日/Nature Day(5/4): Essentially the Japanese version of Earth Day, aptly translated as "Greenery Day".
• こどもの日/Children's Day(5/5): Families pray for the good health and fortune of their sons(despite the title of the holiday).

Carp streamers are put on display to honor Children's Day

Even though Golden Week is an annually observed series of holidays, this year saw the addition of several more, totaling an unprecedented amount of 10 consecutive holidays. On 5/1, the new emperor will be coronated marking the beginning of the 令和 era, thus becoming a National Holiday. However, the cool part is the existance of a law that designates the day falling in-between two national holidays also be observed as a national holiday. Taking this into consideration, both 4/30 and 5/2 become holidays. With so much time off, Golden week becomes one of the 3 busiest travel times of the year. Since a variety of businesses are closed during this time, most people take this opportunity to visit their hometowns or travel abroad. On the flipside, a lot more people continue to work at some point during the holiday, usually opting to come in on a saturday or sunday in an effort to make-up lost time. My day job requires me to work in the public school system, so I will have an uninterrupted break until the 7th. During this time I will be leaving Tokyo at some point to visit my girlfriend's family in the countryside for a few days.

How often do you travel? Do you get to enjoy many vacation days throughout the the year? What would you do if you had 10 days off? Leave your thoughts in the comments below. As always, don't forget to like and share this post~

Until next time,
Peace