| Jan 1
| New Year's Day
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| New's Years is the most important holiday of the year in Japan. Literally, everything stops. Offices usually close December 28 or 29 until January 3 or 4. After Christmas prepartion for New Year's begins, house are decorated with pine bamboo and plum and the decorations stay up until January 7th. New's Year is family time when they gather to eat special meals and spend time playing traditional games such as guessing poems, spinning tops, and flying kites. Before midnight, people begin to visit Shinto shrines to pray prosperity in the coming. It is called hatsumode, first visit of the year.
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| Jan (second Monday)
| Coming of age Day
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| It occurs the second Monday of January. All of those who turned twenty between Jan. 16 of the previous year and Jan. 15 of the new year become adults. The can vote and buy alcohol and tabacco. Young women and a few men dress in formal kimono.
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| Feb 3
| Setsubun
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| This day marks the passing of winter. Japanese buy special soy beans at supermarkets and throw them in every room of the house declaring: "Luck come in, devils go out!" A few shinto shrines perform dances where beans are thrown to expel the demons in the coming years.
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| Feb 14
| Valentine's Day
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| After WWII the Japanese adopted this holiday from America. Unlike how the American's celebrate Valentine's day, women give the chocolate to men. Chocolate is given not only to their "significiant other," but to all the men at their offices.
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| March 3
| Girl's Day
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| (Hina Matsuri) was started when families went on outings to view peach blossoms. Girls threw paper dolls in the river to cast off misfortune and illness. Over time the dolls became more extravagant that no one wanted to throw them in the water anymore. Instead the dolls were set up on stands, and maternal grandparents give a set of dolls for a child's first girls' day. Dolls are set up a month before the day and taken down on March 3. Superstition claims that if the dolls are not taken down then the girl won't get married.
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