We just had a string of holidays here in Japan that are all lumped together to give us a nice few days off of work. Someone told us (for all I know this could just be hearsay) that until quite recently, the concept of a working holiday was something unheard of here in Japan. It wasn’t until the Japanese started traveling internationally and westerners starting moving here, that they discovered something called a “holiday.” The National Government thought it would be a novel idea to give out some holidays to the hardworking people of Japan, but they figured what’s the point in just one day here and there. So they lumped about half of the national holidays into about a weeks span of time called Golden week. The holidays include: The Emperor’s birthday, Greenery day, Showa Day, Constitution Memorial day, and Children’s day. In honor of children’s day, they have a long-standing tradition of flying koinobori. It’s actually originally a Chinese tradition, but like most other Chinese traditions the Japanese have adopted their own version. Koinobori are koi shaped windsocks that people will hang outside of their home and along riversides. The Koinobori symbolize an old Chinese legend about a koi fish that is so strong he swims right upstream and turns into a dragon. Likewise, it is said if you hang the koinobori outside of your home, it will bring prosperity, good luck, and strength to your boy children so that they will grow strong like the koi that turned into a dragon. The koinobori are flown from April until the beginning of May. We drove about two hours away just to go to this riverside that is quite famous for it’s koinobori display. There were more than we could have possibly imagined!