Tuesday, September 1, 2009

九月(kugatsu): September

A new month has started. September is kugatsu (九月) in Japanese. The old name is nagatsuki (長月), literally long month, meaning night-long month.
September 1 is known as bosai no hi(防災の日), Day of disaster prevention. On September 1, 1923 at 11:58:32 am JST, there was the biggest earthquake in the Kanto area which is called Kanto dai shinsai(関東大震災:Great Kanto earthquake). The quake had a magnitude of 7.9. Casualty estimates 142,800 deaths including missing. Since it was a lunch time many people were cooking which caused many fire.
September 1 is known as nihyakutoka(二百十日), 210 days since the first day of spring. It is the time of typhoon.
Therefore September 1 was established as bosai no hi in 1960. When I was a student, we always had hinan kunren(避難訓練), evacuation training around this day.
September 1 is the first day of the second school term for the most of schools in Japan.

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