Special days in Japan

Japan has a day for everything: get to know the country’s bizarre faux holidays with our best picks

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Wednesday 15 August 2018

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Japan is popular for its many national holidays and some of them celebrate quite unusual occurences, such as the Marine Day on July 16 or the Mountain Day on August 11. But did you know that our country has actually a faux holiday for each day of the year?

Most of them are put together by the syllables of the words for that particular month and day. Let's take January 5 as an example − 'Ichigo no hi' (strawberry day) combines the numbers 'ichi' (eng. one) and 'go' (eng. five) which form the word 'ichigo', meaning strawberry in Japanese.

Find out the most bizarre ones in our guide and plan to celebrate a lot more things from now on.

Japan's top 15 faux holidays

January 6

This day is dedicated to the strawberry shortcake (also a must-eat on Christmas Eve).

February 9

If you notice an abrupt price cut in meat at the supermarket, that’s because it is Meat Day.

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Photo: Artem Bali/Pexels

February 12

Ladies, welcome to Bra Day, dedicated to acknowledging your daily companion.

February 22

Cat lovers, circle this ‘Cat Day’ in red and celebrate with your furry friend.

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Photo: Kaique Rocha/Pexels

March 8

Believe it or not, this day is devoted to escalators.

Photo: Lisa Fotios/Pexels

May 9

If you thought it couldn’t get any more bizarre, here’s a Fork Day for you.

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昆虫ふれあい展

June 4

Surely not everybody's favourite, but try to be escpecially kind to all the creepy (and flying) crawlies today. It's Bug Day, afterall − eeks!

July 10

Natto Day − well we would have been surprised if there wasn’t a day dedicated to these fermented beans.

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Photo: Irina Kostenich/Pexels

August 11

This day is dedicated to mushrooms. August 11 marks the birthday of Hikozaburo Morimoto, the first Japanese person who succeeded in cultivating mushrooms.