Big In Japan

Some countries hold national holidays to celebrate the throwing off of colonial yokes or the life of their patron saint, but Japan is surely unique amongst nations in designating a day to revel in the arrival at official adulthood amongst citizens shedding childhood and teenage ways. The annual National Coming Of Age Day was celebrated across Japan on Monday to mark the official majority of everyone who had turned twenty in the last twelve months. This year the event was shrouded in an air of anxiety as Japanese media lamented dramatic changes in the country's demography which is leading to a marked greying of the population. While this is a trend in many of the world's more developed nations, prompting hand wringing about how pensions and healthcare are to be afforded as ratios of the working age and retired parts of the population tilt, the shift in Japan is particularly marked. The birthrate is plummeting while adults of procreating age are eschewing marriage so that official figures project that 40% of Japanese will be over 65 by 2050. Realising that such thoughts probably weren't foremost in the minds of those downing their first legal sakis at the start of the week, the Highly Questionable? team decided to devote today's quiz to national holidays around the world.                 

National Holidays Quiz

1 Independence Day in the United States is celebrated on what date each year? 

2 Bastille Day is an annual national holiday in which country?

3 The Day of the Dead is marked every November across which country? 

4 For 2,000 years which country has held a national holiday called the Festival of Dragon Boats on 5th day of the 5th lunar month?   

5 Waitangi Day is a public holiday each February 6th in New Zealand held to commemorate what?
Answers to our national holidays themed quiz will be published along with tomorrow's quiz questions.

Money Quiz Answers

The answers to yesterday's quiz on the theme of money were:-

1 The Bank of England is the financial institution sometimes referred to as 'the old lady of Threadneedle Street'.

2 Estonia became the latest European country to adopt the euro as its currency when it became the 17th member of the euro-zone on January 1st of this year.

3 Thirty pieces of silver were paid to Judas Iscariot to betray Jesus Christ according to St John's gospel in the New Testament of the Bible. 

4 The Danish krone is the currency in Greenland as it is in the Faeroe Islands and Denmark itself. 

5 The Flying Lizards were the British band who had a surprise hit in the UK and USA in 1979 with their own unorthodox version of the song 'Money'.
The author of the Highly Questionable? blog, Harry Reid, is a freelance question setter, writer and blogger, He can be contacted at harryreid@btinternet.com.