Thanks to Japanese law, I have lots of time to be lazy this week.

Monday is Respect for the Aged day. This is the day when everyone is expected to call their grandparents and/or parents and wish them love and respect. It used to move around, but now, thanks to a Happy Monday system designed to increase the number of national holidays, it takes place on the third Monday in September. Wednesday is Autumnal Equinox when everyone is expected to, well, be happy it’s Autumn and not August.

That leaves Tuesday.

Luckily, Japanese law says that when two holidays are separated by only one work day, that work day becomes a “People’s Day” to honor the people who were going to take the day off anyway. That means we are now enjoying a very rare five day weekend in September. This configuration occurs every five to six to 11 years or so. The last one last occurred in 2009 and the next one will occur in 2020.

This configuration is dubbed “Silver Week” in honor of/contrast to Golden Week when four national holidays occur in the same week.

Golden Week is traditionally the time when Japanese sneak away for short trips. If the holidays fall right, they can use a couple paid holidays to get eight days off to party and do some travelling. Because they’ve already done that, it’s hard to sneak away from the office for another week in September. Silver Week thus becomes more of a shopping time.

Oddly, both She Who Must Be Obeyed and I are working this week. She’ll be on her regular schedule and I will work tomorrow as a substitute teacher for a six hour English intensive class.

Starting Monday, I’ll end up babysitting for a few days, but since the weather is suddenly cool and dry, I may take the girls (or perhaps just our youngest depending on our oldest’s schedule) to a movie. Or, we’ll just sit around and do nothing.

Today was our oldest’s final junior high sports day. I managed to avoid half of it and wanted to avoid more.

I’ve written before about school sports days in Japan and the types of people who attend, but it occurs to me as I write this that I don’t think I’ve ever written about our oldest’s sports days.

This is partly because it is, if I’m doing the math correctly, our oldest’s 12th sports day (3 kindergarten, 6 elementary school, and 3 junior high school). This means that by now we’re pretty much sick of seeing lots of people dance and do sports. We’re interested in seeing how our oldest does, but have little interest in the spectacle.

That said, we arrived dutifully at 8:20 a.m. and watched the opening ceremony. I then discovered, to my horror, that our oldest’s first event wouldn’t take place until 10:20 or so. I considered going home, but stayed around taking pictures–I even manged to get a few good ones that I will post somewhere else (long story).

Luckily the crowd at the sports day has traditionally been very laid back. There’s little fighting to get tarp space as most people stand. Today’s crowd seemed larger than usual but they were polite. Even the precious places in the shade were not fought over.

After lunch–which we had at home and not at the sports field–I conferred with She Who Must Be Obeyed and discovered that there’d be nothing to photograph until after 3:00 p.m. I volunteered to stay home and process pictures whilst she went back to the junior high and filmed the dance routines. (These can be interesting, but you have to have exactly the right spot to take pictures of your child and they are usually only in that spot for a few seconds.)

Even after I came back to see the “Giant Jump Rope Competition” our oldest and the rest of the girls were facing away from me. I got a couple good pictures but nothing with our oldest.

I’ll be interested to see what the high school sports days are like. I’ll try to find out how seriously the school and the parents take the sports day. If it’s too serious, our oldest won’t be able to attend that school.

The other day She Who Must Be Obeyed walked into my home office (aka The Temple of Half-Finished Projects) and asked “Do you want to see a bunch of high school girls?”

My first reaction was a silent “It’s a trap!” followed by a quick scroll through my file of standard responses to traps “You look great.” “It looks beautiful.” “You look beautiful in everything.” “No, they make you look too sexy.” “I’m sorry, did you say something? Wow, your butt looks great in those jeans!”

Unfortunately none of the standard responses seemed suitable to the situation.

Then I realized I might be walking into a different trap. One of the things the Japanese do that sets foreigners on edge is ask questions that seem like traps. The classic example is:

Japanese Person: Are you doing anything this weekend?
Foreign Person: No, I’m just hanging out doing nothing until pay day.
Japanese Person: Do you want to help us set up for sports day this weekend?
Foreign Person: I’m sorry did you say something? Wow, your butt looks great in those jeans!

To the Western mind we’ve been set up and walked into a clever trap. Now that I’ve confided in you and given away any chance of saying I’m busy, you ask me if I want to do something. Damn you, trappy and clever Japanese person.

In truth, the Japanese person is doing the opposite. To their way of thinking, they are being courteous. They don’t want you to feel obligated to do something, especially if you are already doing something. If you’re not doing anything, then they offer you something to do. (I hope that makes sense.) (I also hope you realize it doesn’t make the situation that much less infuriating even if it does make sense.)

In the case of She Who Must Be Obeyed’s question I had to decide if it somehow involved our oldest who will be attending high school next year–she’s a 9th grader which, in Japan, is junior high school–or if it would somehow involve the reading group SWMBO volunteers with, which occasionally reads at schools. If I wasn’t careful, I could be turning down the chance to help her out with something.

Or, she could be walking me into a clever trap.

I opted for the latter and said “Of course not” and then added “unless it’s really, really necessary and I totally won’t take a camera.”

It turns out it did involve our daughter, who is visiting possible high schools. She Who Must Be Obeyed, I suspect, didn’t want to play escort and was trying to get me to do it. In the end, our oldest went with her friend and both of us got to stay home.

The funny part is that if I’d gone, I’d probably have had to take a camera.

A lot of people are about to celebrate spring by getting really drunk.

The arrival of spring in Japan means the cherry blossom trees are about to bloom and the Japanese will get drunk and stupid for at least one night during Hanami, or the flower viewing festival.

I think this festival is so important because it marks the first day the Japanese can have a party outside without freezing. That said, it is still kind of an odd festival.

The truth is the plum blossoms have been blooming for a while and they are much more impressive than the cherry blossoms, most of which are old and are more of a pale pink that a vibrant pink. However, most years the weather is too cold for people to properly enjoy partying outside, especially when it’s only plum blossoms.

Cherry blossoms from a couple years ago. Cool, but kind of pale.

Also, a lot of events happen at once at the end of March: graduations, teacher transfers, company employee transfers and the end of the fiscal year. Everyone’s tired, has cabin fever and is ready to party.

This also leads to a form of competition. Young employees are sent to the most popular party spots (Ueno Park, Shinjuku park and Naka-Meguro) and told to claim a plot of land for their company. The weapon of choice for this claim is a blue tarp. The young employees then work shifts, including spending the night in the park, to keep the prime spot of land claimed.

Some people camp out for a week at time and neither rain nor snow nor sleet nor rival companies will keep them from their appointed plot. (Something like that.)

At the same time the Japanese news is filled with official forecasts of when the leaves will be in full bloom. The forecasts include color charts depicting the current level of bloom and the full bloom day in various cities. Forecasters can get in trouble if they are wrong.

Reporters are sent out the parks to interview earlier partiers and commiserate with the campers as the young reporters probably were the campers the year before.

Once the party starts, it’s basically a 24 hour drunken picnic. Thousands of people assemble on the tarps and thousands more walk around with drinks in hand. Places like Naka-Meguro (a river walk) are so crowded all you can do is walk (don’t stop, it’s too dangerous to stop) and photographers will nearly come to blows trying to get the best angles.

At that point the tabloid magazines send out their reporters and photographers to capture the revelry and as much debauchery as possible. Back after I moved to Tokyo, a group of us managed to find a spot in Ueno Park along with tens of thousands of other people. We were then invited to join another group.

At some point a tabloid photographer started stalking us, mostly to get pictures of drunken foreigners and, especially drunken foreign women. That tabloid shut down soon after that party, but there might accidentally be a picture of me out there.

Luckily, it will be pretty boring.

More cherry blossoms. Still kind of pale, though.