Golden Week!

Been busy with work and ill family lately, so I almost missed this. This week in Japan is known as “Golden Week“, or often times written as ゴルデンウィーク (goruden ui-ku), or more formally as ōgonshūkan (黄金週間).

For some reason, the Japanese Calendar has several minor public holidays all in a row, with a weekend in between. As Wikipedia states, the holidays are:

• Showa Day, Apr. 29th
• Constitution Day, May 3rd
• Greenery Day, now May 4th, but moves around for various political/historical reasons.
• Children’s Day, which is really just Boy’s Day, as a counter part to Girl’s Day. Takes place on May 5th, but used to be a different holiday called Shōbu no hi (尚武の日), which means “Day of the Iris [flower]“. Part of the five seasonal holidays mentioned in a previous post.

I believe there is also a “Silver Week” in Japan, which contains another set of minor holidays, but people don’t seem to observe that as much. Golden Week is a like a big spring break in Japan, but for the whole country. People often take the whole week off and go on huge vacations, the longest of the year. Considering how much time people work in Japan, and how little time off people take, it’s a big deal. When you consider the excellent weather at this time, between the bitter winter and humid summer, that is another bonus.

As mentioned before, I watch/listen to Nihon Terebi News almost daily to practice listening to Japanese, and they have been featuring a big segment for a few days on travel in Japan for Golden Week. Naturally with the new flu outbreak, people are not traveling as much, but Golden Week is still a really big deal there. For folks driving in Japan, they are doing lots of features on cheaper places to travel (and avoiding heavy tolls on some highways), as well as cheap things to do at home. Seems the economy is affecting everyone these days.

Update: Silver Week is a term meaning any week (besides Golden Week) where a lot of holidays happen to be strung together that year.