Hi all,

[I wasn't sure whether to post this in the Lounge, but I figured it had some relation to culture and life in Japan.]

Earlier this year I stayed with a couple of families in Japan, and I've been thinking of what I could send them as gifts for Christmas / New Year. So, I was thinking of sending some wall calendars with photos of Australia.

There seem to be a few online services (e.g. Vistaprint) which do this where you can upload your photos and customise it etc and then they print it and send it to you.

The issue is, I want the calendar to be potentially useful to these families, and so I figure that it needs to have Japanese national holidays and any other significant dates you'd expect to find on a calendar. I also want to make sure that I'm getting the overall formatting right. I figured that some people here have lived in Japan for a while and might be able to help me out or point me to other resources. Maybe people have some Japanese calendars for this year or previous years they can look at.

I was able to find a list of 2012 holidays in Japan, but I have a few questions:
1) Do calendars in Japan generally run from January -> December?
2) Do calendars in Japan start the week on a Sunday or a Monday?
3) Is the list of holidays I found accurate? When I searched I found a lot of lists but not all of them were the same. If anyone can find a list that isn't in romaji that would be good too I think.
4) Are there any region-specific or prefecture-specific holidays that I might not find on a list of national holidays? One of the families I want to send it to lives in Saitama, the other lives in Yamaguchi.
5) Are there any other significant days that should be on a calendar but aren't necessarily public holidays?

Any help would be greatly appreciated, and I hope it can be a useful idea for others who are considering gifts to send to their Japanese friends.

Cheers,
codebeard.

First, you should just send them a gift shortly after returning. You can still send them a New Years card, but it has to arrive in the first 3 days of the New Year.

You could make your own calendar. They would appreciate that more than an expensive calendar. There would be no problem if you write the English equivalence. The Japanese calender generally follows the America calender in Weekdays and months. The National Holidays only would be sufficient.

New years in 3 days. 1,2 and 3. Other than it that just note that the national holiday and substitute national holiday should be indicated, and the others just ignored.

1) Yes
2) Sunday
3) Yes, appears so. Note that only the ones that say (national holiday) are national holidays and the rest are not usually denoted on calendars.
4) Not that I know of. Not something you would need to worry about putting on your calendar.
5) Not usually.

I'm not sure what Omoishinji means about New Years being 3 days. It is one day, Jan. 1st, but the 2nd is a substitute holiday in 2012 because the 1st falls on a Sunday.

For Saitama, you could mention the Chichibu Night Festival, which is not a holiday, but apparently it's a pretty big event with a long history:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saitama_Prefecture#Events

JimmySeal Wrote:1) Yes
2) Sunday
3) Yes, appears so. Note that only the ones that say (national holiday) are national holidays and the rest are not usually denoted on calendars.
4) Not that I know of. Not something you would need to worry about putting on your calendar.
5) Not usually.

I'm not sure what Omoishinji means about New Years being 3 days. It is one day, Jan. 1st, but the 2nd is a substitute holiday in 2012 because the 1st falls on a Sunday.

I mean that generally, most people visit shrines and other things during the first 3 days of the year. Consider it more akin to our Christmas and Boxing day.

Omoishinji Wrote:First, you should just send them a gift shortly after returning. You can still send them a New Years card, but it has to arrive in the first 3 days of the New Year.

Thanks for your help. Yeah, I already sent them something to thank them after I arrived home.

Omoishinji Wrote:You could make your own calendar. They would appreciate that more than an expensive calendar. There would be no problem if you write the English equivalence.

I thought about making the calendar myself, but there's nearly no way I could make a calendar as nice as the ones from these big online printers -- I mean, they do the binding etc and it's a lot cheaper than making it yourself. I'm hoping that the fact that it's my own photography featured in the calendar, along with my own translated captions and a small letter will make it personal enough.

Omoishinji Wrote:The Japanese calender generally follows the America calender in Weekdays and months. The National Holidays only would be sufficient.

When you say American calendar, do you mean January -> December and with weeks starting on Sundays? I live in Australia, so I don't want to assume that it's the same.

codebeard Wrote:When you say American calendar, do you mean January -> December and with weeks starting on Sundays? I live in Australia, so I don't want to assume that it's the same.

I already answered both of these questions...

JimmySeal Wrote:I already answered both of these questions...

Indeed you did -- sorry about that. Thank you for your help.