New Year in lunar calendar 2016/2/8
It is the first day of the year in lunar calendar today. Nowadays it is seldom in Japan to cerebrate lunar New Year. After Japan decided to follow western culture and social system, Meiji government adopted Gregorian calendar which is a kind of solar calendar and made conventional lunar calendar invalid in 1972, because it is much easier to communicate with western world in Gregorian calendar.
There have been uncountable numbers of traditional historic seasonal events in Japan, from the first day of the tear till the last day of the year, and gradually they have changed the date of such events from lunar to solar calendar. There is roughly around one month gap between lunar and solar calendar, therefore it is unavoidable to have some differences between seasonal events and actual seasons.
For example, New Year is called Spring festival and we have tradition to take seven kinds green vegetables, however it is too early for those vegetable to grow up by New Year in solar calendar. Or, we have traditional Star festival on July 7th to enjoy beautiful stars in clear autumn sky, Â however it falls on rainy season by solar calendar.
Asian countries followed Japanese way by switching from lunar to solar calendar, however they stick to hold seasonal events by traditional lunar calendar, and they cerebrate Spring festival with long term holidays in lunar calendar. Utilizing this long holidays, there are lots of Asian visitors to Japan to enjoy beautiful scenery, delicious Japanese cuisine, warm hospitality and shopping. Those great numbers of visitors remind Japanese of Spring festival in lunar calendar which Japanese have forgotten sometime ago.
　foreign visitors in Namba Osaka.
