'May Blues' Turn Gold during Golden Week

May in Japan is a symphony of spring colors. The last of the cherry blossoms have withered, their scattered petals long since blown away. In their place bright green young leaves and pink and purple flowers, especially wisteria, are bursting forth (I tell you, it's mass wisteria!). May's fresh breeze is a subtle reminder that summer is just around the corner.

May is a time of relaxation in Japan. In the Japanese calendar, April is a month full of changes. It brings the beginning of a new school year and the first day at a new office for the college graduates. Everywhere are new faces to learn, new suits, new books, and new bags. The TV and radio stations even begin new programming schedules, and many of your favorite shows, hosts and DJs may be gone.

Change - even positive change - produces stress, and stress can lead to depression. Some people call it the May Blues; in Japanese it is the satsuki-byo, the May Sickness.

It may just be coincidence, but Golden Week, Japan's infamous weeklong vacation, comes around right as the Japanese need a break from the new routine. During Golden Week, numerous holidays occur in a cluster: Greenery Day (April 29), Constitution and Memorial Day (May 3), Children's Day (May 5), and an extra holiday thrown in on May 4, just to knit them all together.

With these holidays and weekends in between, Golden Week can stretch up to 10 days. Though numerous Japanese spend their Golden Week abroad, local hotels, resorts, attractions and roads will be very crowded. Trains and buses will also be operating on holiday schedule.

If you stereotypically think of the modern Japanese as a corporate salaryman, slavishly dedicated to his company, packed into a train heading for another long day at work, then you are shortchanging the culture significantly. Even modern Japanese still observe so many shamanistic rituals that it would not be untoward to compare them to Native Americans. These ceremonies often take the form of dances, like the bon odori (summer dance) or the remarkable mikoshi parade that looks so odd to Westerners.

May is a great time to observe some of these traditions, starting with Children's Day on May 5. The fifth day of the fifth month is officially called "Children's Day," though some people refer to it as "Boy's Day," because the girls have their own day on the third day of the third month. On Girl's Day, families with female children (there really is no age limit, though) set up an elaborate display of dolls representing the imperial court. On Boy's Day, the doll display has a more masculine theme, tending towards such things as samurai dolls, samurai helmets (kabuto), and the like.

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