Happy Kenkokukinenbi to you all!

Sup? Monday was a national holiday over here in J-pan, and the coolest thing about my new job is that I actually get national holidays off! Wahoo~! So what seems like what should be a joyous occasion, seeing as "Kenkokukinenbi" means "National Foundation Day" , is highly uncelebrated. You occasionally see a couple of flags flying around town, but that's about it... So, being the patriot that I am, I decided to take it upon myself to establish some new holiday traditions! This year, only mornin and I took part in them, but I plan to expanded it across the board next year! To kick off the day I thought "what could be better than a traditional Japanese breakfast?" So I ate one! On the menu were 3 Japanese morning staples; Miso soup, rice, and natto (fermented soy beans). Here's what it looked like:

Later in the day, round 6 o'clock to be precise, the next tradition on the list was the time honored Japanese eats known as "sushi!" That's right, with the "!" This was only the 2nd time I've gone out for sushi since returning to Japan nearly 2 years ago, but, hey, it's a holiday right? Here's some of what that looked like:

Along with the sushi, it is now a new holiday tradition to drink some Sake, or more specifically, "Nihon-shu" or "Japanese Sake". The sushi was good, the sake was pretty good, and to cap off the day, what else was there to do but sing my butt? off at Karaoke? And oooooh did we! About 5 hours of singing battles ensued... an epic amount of time for 2 people to undertake I must say. The peak of the evening was most assuredly the singing of Japan's national anthem "Kimigayo" (see No Airplay vol. 7 for reference) which is of course also a new tradition established on Monday. So, all-in-all, I think it was a really good day, I'm pretty happy with the new holiday traditions that were established, and hope to bust them all out again next year, hope I can get alot of people in on it next year, and spread these new-wave Kenkokukinenbi hoiday traditions spread out all over Japan, Happy Birthday Japan!