Tarto in Japan

Sorry for the lack of updates lately, but I've been very busy with the golden week that just ended. The golden week is a series of 4 national holidays very close to one another (within 7 days) and represents one of the three main holiday periods in Japan. The other two are the new year and o-bon (お盆, festival of the dead, in summer). Those days are:

- 29th april: birthday of former emperor Showa

- 3rd may : the post war constitution, put into effect in 1947

- 4th may : thanks to a law that stated that any day that falls between two national holidays would in turn become a national holiday (nice, isn't it?), the 4th may became a national holiday. It has been renamed since and has become greenery day

- 5th may : children's day

It seems that if one of those days falls on a sunday, then the following monday is considered as a public holiday. As you may guess, there are good years and bad years, for instance next year is particularly bad since the only days off will be tuesday april 29th and monday may 5th, the 3rd and 4th overlapping the week-end!...

Anyway, the golden week is usually a great opportunity for Japanese people to travel. Indeed in Japan, not only there's not a lot of holidays, but it's also not easy to take them. Taking holidays also means additional work for the co-workers who stay...But during the golden week it's different, most people are on holiday and quite a few companies also close or run with limited staff, so there's no problem of co-workers left behind and one can travel...although roads, trains, hotels etc are crowded and prices climb significantly!...

For me, it was rather a "golden opportunity" to stay quietly at home, out of the question that I travel at the same time as everybody else! But then again, "quietly" is not the most appropriate word, in fact I spent my days and evenings in Nagoya and as usual, holidays were more tiring than school...