July 20th

Braydon wants to know - "Where is Japan?".
Here are some tidbits that I found in one of the books we have.

"When Japanese schoolchildren look at a map of the world in geography class, they see an island nation situated in the middle of the globe. To the east are a vast sea (the Pacific Ocean) and the American continents. To the west are the rest of Asia, Africa, and Europe.
Japan has four main islands and 4,000 smaller islands stretching 1,864 miles. According to legend, the islands were created by the Sun goddess many millennia ago - a string of volcanoes rising up from the sea like jewels, ringed by myriad droplets."

So get out a map or a globe and show the kids where we are. It is only a bit larger than Calfornia and has 127 million people. But 80% of the land is mountainous so people are crowded into a small portion of the land. There are 60 active volcanoes. The tallest at 12,388 feet is Mt Fuji. It last erupted in 1707.

Today is a holiday. Here is a bit about it.

Marine Day (海の日, Umi no hi?), known as 'Ocean Day' or 'Sea Day' or 'Marine Day', is a Japanese national holiday celebrated on the third Monday in July. Many people take advantage of the holiday and summer weather to take a beach trip. As it is a modern secular holiday, there are no traditional ceremonies associated with the day.

National law establishes Marine Day as a day of gratitude for the blessings of the oceans and to hope for the economic prosperity of maritime Japan. Prior to 1996, it was known as Marine Memorial Day, and was not a holiday. In 1996, it became a national holiday, with its date fixed as July 20. An amendment to the law was made in 2003 to set the holiday on a Monday.
"Marine Day" was declared a national holiday in 1995. First observed on July 20, 1996, the Happy Monday System (ハッピーマンデー制度, Happī Mandē Seido?) legislation moved the date from July 20 to the third Monday of July from 2003.

So HAPPY MONDAY to all!