Nihon no matsuri to horidee guido

Annual Japanese Calendar Holidays, Celebrations, Festivals & Remembrances

SUMMARY -- Nihon no matsuri to horidee guido

Some major Japanese festivals are not national holidays; and some national holidays are not celebrated with overt festivities. A few of the holidays and many of the festivals can float on the calendar for any given year, e.g. when a holiday falls on a Sunday, Monday becomes a day off. Conversely, a festival which falls on a Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday is often celebrated in temples or shrines the previous weekend.

Japanese holidays are all national, but festivals are often regional. These articles primarily concern those recognized and celebrated in the Tokyo and surrounding Kanto (Yokohama, Chiba, Saitama,...) region. Refer to the attached HTMLed articles for more information. Most of these articles were originally written for (the now discontinued) Tokyo Today Magazine [TT] in the early 1990's, where I was theCultural Editor for about two years. I've touched them up, but otherwise they are provided as is, for whomever would like to peruse them, etc. I was astounded at the gaps on the web concerning some types of information, so I decided to post these. I lived in Tokyo for over 5 years, speak the language, and have traveled to more cities and towns across Japan than many Japanese. (BTW, I returned to the US in early 1996, now living near Portland, Oregon, and am working for a large computer company there.)

(This page originally came from: http://www.paulzilla.org/japanese/...) And... this is ©1997 Paul Abramson. Most rights reserved, meaning that you may copy and share this information with numerous friends, co-workers, or students, etc. Give proper credit too, please, i.e. include my name and also copy this copyright info. However, written permission is required prior to any commercial and/or for-profit reproduction of any kind. If in doubt, please ask me - thank you! Paul Abramson paul@zzz.com

New Year's Day (ganjitsu) January 1st --National Holiday--