お盆休み- what does this mean?

[istephenyu8790]

I saw this phrase on the headlines of some japanese news. jpod did not have dictionary definition, and i don't trust google translate. I notice that the last half is used for oyasumi, and the second character means 'basin' in chinese.

the full news headline was お盆休み　帰国ラッシュもピーク

[mmmason8967]

お盆 is O-Bon, the Bon Festival or Lantern Festival, which is on August 15.

マイケル

[istephenyu8790]

oh！ ok thanks. seems to be something worth looking to

[community.japanese]

istephenyu8790-san, マイケルsan,
kon'nichiwa

That's a typical headline we see at this time of the year
Like マイケルsan said, お盆休み is holiday for mid-August (お盆 is 13th-15th August, but in some
cities it seems to be 14th-16th...) and many Japanese people take holiday around those days
to have special time at home with family and ancestors, traditionally.
Recently, people take holiday and travel "to have fun" including travel abroad.
帰国 means coming back to Japan from other countries.
Because many people take holiday and travel at the same time, there're always "rush crushes" on
public transportations. 帰国ラッシュもピーク means "rush to home (country) is also at the peak".

Natsuko(奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com