On the third Monday of July each year, the Japanese celebrate what is known as Marine Day (”Umi no hi”). This is a relatively new national holiday to celebrate the honor of the ocean and wish for the prosperity of Japan as an ocean country.

In the past, the sea has played a very significant part of Japan’s economy.  Marine Day was originally designated in 1941 as the anniversary of the day when Emperor Meiji returned in 1876 from his boat trip to Hokkaido after an inspection.

When it was became a national holiday in 1996, Marine Day fell on July 20, but it has since been moved to the third Monday in July to create three-day-weekend, which is part of a movement called the “Happy Monday System” where a handful of designated holidays were moved to Monday.

Aquariums, swimming pools, and other facilities related to water or the ocean make their facilities available to the general public at low discounts and also arrange special events on this day.

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Welcome to Forum Spotlight! Here we’ll be introducing interesting and useful posts made by members at our very own JapanesePod101.com Forum. This week’s forum spotlight post is by Taurus, who shared a great site that features Japanese songs lyrics in the original Japanese with nice English translations. After posting this, many other forum members jumped in with their own Japanese lyric site links. Singing in Japanese is actually a great way to improve your Japanese pronunciation, so why not give it a try!

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Posted by Taurus:
I’m sorry if this has been posted before but, inspired by my quest to find surprising karaoke songs, I’ve just come across a website that has a load of song lyrics in both Japanese and English. It might be useful if you’re trying to expand the range of your exposure to original Japanese sources.

http://www.quartet4.net/ (English translation, Japanese)
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Recommended by Psy-san
http://www.kasi-time.com/ (Japanese)
http://www.animelyrics.com/ (romaji)

Recommended byKobukuro-san
http://mognet.net/ (English translation, romaji, Japanese)
http://www.cherryblossom-garden.com/ (romaji, Japanese)

Recommended by Jessi
http://www.uta-net.com/ (Japanese)

Recommended by Kageri-san
www.gendou.com/ (English translation, romaji, Japanese)

Thank you everyone for the great links!

You can find a lot more useful information like this at the JapanesePod101.com Forum, so stop by and join in the many discussions with fellow listeners and the JPOD101 crew!

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Learn Japanese - Learn more about Japanese, Japan and Japanese culture