The number of holidays in Japan is so great that it creates the feeling that songs and dances, grandiose processions, games and competitions are continuously accompanying the Japanese people, and wonderful music is never does not stop. In fact, there are only 15 state holidays in the Japanese calendar, but in addition, the local people happily celebrate many unofficial holidays and events.

New Year's Eve in Japan is celebrated twice. January 1 is the state holiday of the New Year (Gandzitsu), a very solemn and important event in the life of the country, which the Japanese are preparing to prepare in advance. The city is filled with wonderful fairs, selling souvenirs, sweets and all kinds of talismans, there are many different rituals and ceremonies.

A tender spring month of March the Japanese gave to women, on March 3, Hina Matsuri is celebrated here - a holiday of the Hin dolls or the day of little girls. A fine custom corresponds to this day: if there is a girl in the family, an exhibition of dolls in stunning outfits takes place in the house, because today these traditional dolls are real masterpieces, discharged into silk and velvet.

Japanese and Western borrowed from the West, also celebrated on February 14. Only gifts on this day are given only by women. But March 14 is the White Day, in which the turn of men comes to present their beloved with white chocolate

On March 15 in Japan one of the most scandalous and eccentric holidays - Fertility Festival (Honen Matsuri) .On this day in the Japanese city of Komaki comes an incredible multitude of people who pray in the temple to the gods, who are phalluses of the most varied shapes and sizes, and in the evening unite into a gigantic, noisy and cheerful crowd marching along city streets and carrying with them the main symbol of this unusual festival is a huge cypress phallus weighing almost 300 kg .Which, by the way, are cut out every year .In fact, the Japanese worship a wooden phallus, and the goddess Tamahime-no-Mikoto, the phallus symbolizes her husband-the warrior Tak-ina-danet .

Although the cherry blossom period is not included in the Japanese calendar of holidays, but it is impossible beautiful time is very beloved by the Japanese and a lot of tourists from all over the world that these days flood the parks and streets, blossoming with delicate cherry blossoms, filled with a twisting aroma .This period corresponds to the most popular period of khanami - admiring flowers, when employees of the firms in full make their way to the parks and spend their working hours in the air surrounded by their boss and colleagues, admiring the flowering .However, on a picnic under blossoming trees you can go not only during the day, but also at night: under the trees there is a highlight, amazingly shading flowers .This pastime is called дdzakura (night sakura) and characterizes the transience of all the beautiful in the world, which you need to see and feel .

A very important place among Japanese holidays is occupied by those associated with the memory of the deceased .The most significant of them is O-Bon, which is celebrated throughout Japan in July or August .The belief says that these days the souls of the deceased descend to the ground to see their relatives .People bring food to the temple and leave it at the home altar .This festival is often called the Lantern Festival, because with the onset of darkness it is customary to hang lanterns next to the house that will show the spirits the way home .But the most beautiful part of the holiday can be called the closing ceremony of the floating lanterns (Toro-Nagashi), during which the Japanese put on water colorful paper lanterns with candles that will not let the spirits returning to the country of the dead go astray .