Happy Tanabata Day!

The 7th day of the 7th month marks another holiday for Japan.  Sadly this one doesn't qualify as a national holiday or come with a day off, but as usual it does come with some goofy traditions!!

Tanabata literally means "evening of the seventh".  It celebrates the meeting of two lovers, Orihime (Vega) and Hikoboshi (Altair). According to legend, the Milky Way (a river of stars that cross the sky) separates two lovers, and they are allowed to meet only once a year on the seventh day of the seventh month. It's believed that Orihime and Hikoboshi can't cross the Milky Way to see each other if the evening is rainy or cloudy, so people pray for good weather and also make wishes for themselves.

In Japan people generally celebrate this day by writing wishes on tanzaku (small pieces of paper) and hanging them on bamboo trees.  Here's a tanabata display in the lobby of Lucent Tower, the office building near my apartment.

Unfortunately, my company (Mitsui) did not supply bamboo trees and tanzaku so that we could make wishes on this day.

I'm told that women generally wish for help with their love life (shocking!), and (I'm not making this up...) men generally wish for better penmanship!!  LOL.

Tanabata is often celebrated at different times in different areas of Japan, depending on which calendar is used to determine the 7th day of the 7th month.  I have tentative plans to go a Tanabata festival later this month on a weekend (since they use the Lunar calendar) in a city near Nagoya, where I will surely be encouraged to write a wish about finding myself a husband!!