The Japanese and their holiday saga
Oh to have a completely new holiday added to our already long list! A holiday is welcome to one and all and if only we too like Japan, decided to honour our rivers or mountains.
Japan currently has 15 civic holidays and now the country will have one more day added – Mountain Day. A swanky new reason to celebrate, this holiday is scheduled for 11th August and will start from 2016. Known as Yama no Hi, the proposed amendment to the Act on National Holidays in Japan says that the “meaning of ‘Mountain Day’ is to have an opportunity to become closer to mountains and give thanks to their blessings." 70% of Japan is covered by mountains and this, they will be like a ‘thank you’ to them.
Japanese holidays tend to be arbitrary affairs named after random things like the ocean. They have holidays to honor the elderly, to celebrate children, two for equinoxes and one for greenery. Umi no Hi is a day off to respect the ocean. And now the mountains.
The aim of the Govt, by bringing in more holidays is to ensure that more and more of its hard working labor force leave the confines of their work place and get out more often. Most of the Japanese do not even take their annual paid vacation – on an average, based on a Govt survey, it was found that the Japanese, on an average took only 8.6 days of personal vacation in 2013, which is less than half the standard entitlement. They prefer to come to work rather than burden their colleagues with their work and to avoid the need to apologize to the boss for their absence. But when it’s a legal holiday, they take the day off; everything is shut down. This holiday is planned during the annual vacation period so that they think of staying away from work for more time.
Well, the Japanese indeed seem to hail from a completely different planet. We all need just a pretext of a holiday and we take off, with a sense of proprietorship. Guess that is what makes Japan what it is today.