Holidays

The most important holiday in Japan is New Year (Oshōgatsu), which pretty much shuts down the country between December 29 and January 3. Japanese head home to their families (which means massive transport congestion), eat festive foods and head out to the neighborhood temple at the stroke of midnight to wish in the New Year. Many Japanese often travel to other countries as well, and prices for airfares are very high.

In March or April, Japanese head out en masse for hanami (lit. "flower viewing"), a festival of outdoors picnics and drunken revelry in parks, cleverly disguised as cherry blossom (sakura) viewing. The exact timing of the famously fleeting blossoms varies from year to year and Japan's TV channels follow the progress of the cherry blossom front from south to north obsessively.

The longest holiday is Golden Week (April 27 to May 6), when there are four public holidays within a week and everybody goes on extended vacation. Trains are crowded, flight and hotel prices are jacked up to multiples of normal prices, making this a bad time to travel in Japan, but the weeks immediately before or after GW are excellent choices.

Summer brings a spate of festivals designed to distract people from the intolerable heat and humidity (comparable to the US Midwest). There are local festivals (matsuri) and impressive fireworks competitions (hanabi) throughout the country. Tanabata, on July 7th (or early August in some places), commemorates a story of star-crossed lovers who could only meet on this day. The largest summer festival is Obon, held in mid-July in eastern Japan (Kanto) and mid-August in western Japan (Kansai), which honors the departed spirits of one's ancestors. Everybody heads home to visit village graveyards, meaning that transport is packed.

The Japanese calendar

The Imperial era year, which counts from the year of ascension of the Emperor, is often used for reckoning dates in Japan, including transportation timetables and store receipts. The current era is Heisei and Heisei 17 corresponds to 2005. The year may be written as "H17" or just "17", so "17/6/5" is June 5th 2005. Western years are also well understood and frequently used.

Religion

Japan has two dominant religious traditions: Shinto is the ancient animist religion of traditional Japan. At just over twelve hundred years in Japan, Buddhism is the more recent imported faith. Christianity, introduced by European missionaries, was widely persecuted during the feudal era but is now accepted, and a small percentage of Japanese are Christian.

Generally speaking, the Japanese are not a particularly religious people. While they regularly visit shrines and temples to offer coins and make silent prayers, religious faith and doctrine play a small role (if any) in the life of the average Japanese. Thus it would be impossible to try to represent what percentage of the population is Shinto versus Buddhist, or even Christian. According to a famous poll, Japan is 80% Shinto and 80% Buddhist, and another oft-quoted dictum states that Japanese are Shinto when they live, as weddings and festivals are typically Shinto, but Buddhist when they die, since funerals usually use Buddhist rites. Most Japanese accept a little bit of every religion.

At the same time, Shinto and Buddhism have had anenormous influence on the country's history and cultural life. The Shinto religion focuses on the spirit of the land, and is reflected in the country's exquisite gardens and peaceful shrines deep in ancient forests. When you visit a shrine (jinja) with its simple torii gate, you are seeing Shinto customs and styles. If you see an empty plot of land with some white paper suspended in a square, that's a Shinto ceremony to dedicate the land for a new building. Buddhism in Japan has branched out in numerous directions over the centuries. Nichiren is currently the largest branch of Buddhist belief, and many westerners are introduced to Japanese Buddhism through Soka Gakkai (sōkagakkai), a Nichiren sect that is somewhat controversial for its evangelical zeal and its involvement in Japanese politics. Westerners are probably most familiar with Zen Buddhism, which was introduced to Japan in the 14th and 15th centuries. Zen fit the aesthetic and moral sensibilities of medieval Japan, influencing arts such as flower-arranging (ikebana), tea ceremony (sadō), ceramics, painting, calligraphy, poetry, and the martial arts. Over the years, Shinto and Buddhism have intertwined considerably. You will find them side by side in cities, towns, and people's lives. It's not at all unusual to find a sparse Shinto torii standing before an elaborate Buddhist o-tera (temple).

Amusement

Karaoke and Pachinko (Japanese-style pinball) are famous throughout Japan. You can enjoy them in virtually every Japanese city.

Shopping is another activity in wich the Japanese participate with fervor.

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