Fun With Holidays: National Labor Thanksgiving Day

This coming Friday happens to be a public holiday in Japan. It's "National Labor Thanksgiving Day". Though it has "thanksgiving" in the name, it has none of the same connotations as American Thanksgiving, and there are no specific customs for celebrating it. I guess you'd say it's more like Labor Day than Thanksgiving. Basically, it's just a day off.

A group of my friends are taking advantage of this holiday by going to Korea for a short trip, but since it requires taking off some actual work days, I am not able to join them. However, Tatsuya also has the day off (what with it being a national holiday) and we're planning to spend some time together. He still has to go in to school for club activities, apparently, but he should have a good chunk of the day off, all the same. I'm hoping we can maybe go to the Makino Botanical Gardens to see the chrysanthemums. But I imagine what we end up doing will depend largely on the time of day he gets done with club activities. I'll be happy enough to do anything, though, and it's exciting to think we might get to do stuff together during the day for once. Generally I only see him in the evening, after work is done.

Other than that, this should be a pretty normal week. But I'm excited to only have four days of work to do, and to spend some time with Tatsuya. On a related note, I'm currently trying to figure out what to get him for Christmas. I don't have a lot of ideas; the best idea I've come up with so far is a pair of leather gloves. That seems like something useful, but also nice enough that he probably wouldn't buy it for himself. I'm still thinking, though, because it would be nice to come up with something more fun than that. The last gift I gave him was a belt for his birthday.

Anyhow, those are pretty much all my plans for this week. Hopefully it'll be a good one. Everybody back home, enjoy Thanksgiving dinner! I'm grateful I got to join in on Canadian Thanksgiving with my friends this year, or else I'd be pretty sad at having gone another year with no turkey dinner. To my family and friends: You are what I'm thankful for.