{"id":1155,"date":"2012-04-25T20:52:42","date_gmt":"2012-04-25T11:52:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jrem.net\/life-in-japan\/?p=1155"},"modified":"2012-04-25T20:52:42","modified_gmt":"2012-04-25T11:52:42","slug":"a-few-days-shy-of-a-golden-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.jrem.net\/?p=1155","title":{"rendered":"(A few days shy of a) Golden Week!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’d say something about being “really busy lately”, but I’m pretty sure that it’s become a nearly constant refrain in my e-mails and phone calls (as well as here). It’s not really worth mentioning anymore, is it? My schedule seems to be clearing up for the near future, anyway, so it’s not so bad. In fact, next week is the not-quite-a-week-long-holiday called “Golden Week”!<\/p>\n

What is Golden Week<\/em>, you so rightly ask? That is a wonderful question! It’s basically a series of holidays at the end of April and beginning of May that happen to line up so well as to give most workers an extended holiday. What’s always baffled me, though, is that the school year begins in April… and then everyone goes on vacation for a week at the end of the month. Seems like a weird time to do things, but then again, no one asked my opinion on how schools should operate (probably for good reason). But now we’ve strayed off course!<\/p>\n

Golden Week consists of Showa Day <\/strong>(4\/29), Constitution Day <\/strong>(5\/3), Green(ery) Day<\/strong> (5\/4), and Children’s Day<\/strong> (5\/5). The first two celebrate the birthday of the previous emperor and the ratification of the Japanese constitution, respectively. Greenery Day<\/a> ranks up there with other confusing Japanese holidays where you essentially don’t do anything special and there’s not historical significance, but it’s a holiday all the same (not much unlike Marine Day<\/a> in July). Not that I’m complaining, but.. I’d at least like some TV specials to go along with my holidays. Or sales. President’s Day was practically invented for sales.<\/p>\n

And I digress again! Back to the point, lastly we have Children’s Day<\/strong> which, as you may have guessed, is a day for celebrating (?) children! It actually used to be Boy’s Day<\/em> back in the day, but apparently that was a bit sexist. While there actually is<\/strong> a Girl’s Day <\/em>(3\/3), it’s\u00a0not really a holiday. For anyone who’s lived in Hawaii, Brazil or around any other large Japanese communities, you probably know of this holiday or at least recognize the popular flags that are raised up around that time:<\/p>\n

\"Children's<\/a>

Children's Day Flags<\/p><\/div>\n

Random note: I still find it interesting that red is thought of in Asia as a color to signify women. I mean, blue and boys.. sure, I’m used to that. When used as a comparison side-by-side, it makes enough sense. But I don’t naturally associate red with women.<\/em><\/p>\n

Where were we? Ah, yes.. Golden Week. So yeah, that’s coming up next week. I don’t have any plans right now–nor do I anticipate doing anything noteworthy–but a friend\/ex coworker of mine from my English teaching days is coming up to Tokyo this weekend, so I’ll play tour guide for a day. To be totally honest, I’ll probably spend most of my time hanging out in a cafe reading books. It’s a pretty exciting life I lead. I recently found a new book on how to write English contracts… written in Japanese. Why? I like to do everything the hard way, of course! Plus, it’s good practice to learn how the contracts are written in Japanese as well.<\/p>\n

That’s about all I’ve got from me for now, but I’m sure I’ll come up with something to ramble about again shortly!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’d say something about being “really busy lately”, but I’m pretty sure that it’s become a nearly constant refrain in my e-mails and phone calls (as well as here). It’s not really worth mentioning anymore, is it? My schedule seems to be clearing up for the near future, anyway, so it’s not so bad. In fact, next week is the not-quite-a-week-long-holiday called “Golden Week”!<\/p>\n

What is Golden Week, you so rightly ask? That is a wonderful question! It’s basically a series of holidays at the end of April and beginning of May that happen to line up so well . . . → Read More: (A few days shy of a) Golden Week!<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jrem.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1155"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jrem.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jrem.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jrem.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jrem.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1155"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.jrem.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1157,"href":"http:\/\/www.jrem.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1155\/revisions\/1157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jrem.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jrem.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jrem.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}