Japanese Holidays

 Yesterday was a national holiday. Culture Day, Bunka No Hi.

In Japan if a national holiday falls on a Sunday the next day is also a holiday. I planned to go to the City Hall today but it's closed!

Culture Day was inaugurated  in 1948 to commemorate the new constitution that was announced on November 3rd 1946.  The day was already a holiday from 1868 to 1912 to celebrate the birthday of the Emperor Meji. After his death it stopped being a holiday until 1927 when it was changed to Meji-Setsu.

The idea of a culture day is to celebrate arts and scholars, some areas have art exhibits, or culture festivals. A lot of schools have there culture festivals at this time.

I've never done anything on this day!  For me national holidays are a chance to not do anything! When the kids were in school it was a chance to sleep in, not stress about getting breakfast and making obento.  

I read somewhere that the reason that Japan has so many national holidays was to make workers take a holiday.  The law in Japan states that workers should have holidays in summer and winter but a lot of people don't take them.  

Today was another round of shopping, cleaning, packing and sneezing, lots of sneezing. We are all down with seasonal allergies and with moving out furniture we are stirring up a lot of dust!

Almost done! Somebody came to today to see about moving air conditioners and the fridge, the only things we can't move ourselves!  That's going to cost a lot, never mind it has to be done!

This morning I called Mikey from the room I was in, I needed help moving something. He answered and said he couldn't help! I got rather upset until I saw why!

The cats piled on Mikey!