This photo shows a calendar with Oct. 11 marked as Sports Day, a national holiday in Japan. Sports Day was moved in 2021 to July 23 to coincide with the Tokyo Olympics' opening ceremony. (Mainichi/Maki Nakajima)

       TOKYO -- "Oct. 11 is a weekday!" the Cabinet Office's Public Relations Office tweeted from its official account on Oct. 5.

       Under a revision to the Act on Special Measures for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics, which moved 2021's national holidays around to coincide with the opening and closing ceremonies of the Tokyo Olympics, Sports Day on Oct. 11 was moved up to July 23, meaning no holidays in October this year.

       The government stated on Twitter, "Even though Oct. 11 is Sports Day on the calendar, please be aware that this day is a regular weekday. Please tell the people around you."

       The revised law was passed and enacted at a plenary session of the House of Councillors on Nov. 27 last year to ease congestion in central Tokyo during the Games. According to the Japan Calendar Publishers Association, many companies start printing their products at the beginning of the previous year, and member companies' 2021 calendars were rolling off the presses as early as late 2019, and in the spring of 2020 at the latest. As a result, there are many calendars and diaries in circulation for 2021 that could not be changed to reflect the holiday switch in time.

       (Japanese original by Digital News Center)

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