[Meophist]

Originally Posted by Vexx

Golden Week is a collection of 4 holidays and Japan just said "WTH" and made it a whole week off. The whole country pretty much shuts down for festivals and holiday. It happens in the first week of May.

Just to clarify (and be more precise), that's from April 29th to May 5th, correct? I've never actually been in Japan around the time of Golden Week. Just during the summer and winter.

Originally Posted by Vexx

So... the school year starts on April 1st and just about the time everyone gets rolling they have Golden Week. Then in mid-summer there's a one month summer break (which is usually filled with homework and extra-help cram classes) then a fall stretch until the harvest holidays.

Summer homework... bad memories...

Originally Posted by Vexx

The wiki thoughts are interesting but mostly speculative.... basic problem with wiki-data is that lame stuff can get left in if few participate or no one provides updated info. Anime stuff in particular seems to have its share of "religious viewpoints" that may or may not have references for backup.

I'm talking about this in particular:

Originally Posted by SOS団

There are two date-related lines in episode 2; "In the process, we reached the first day after Golden Week." and "So that makes today Wednesday." Considering "the first day after Golden Week" is May 6th that is Wednesday, the year of the story is estimated as 2009, thus "Three years before" is 2006. The anime The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya became a big boom in 2006, and we actually saw the "information flare" caused by Haruhi Suzumiya on the net (like this page or Youtube, for example).

Forgetting the last sentence, this at least happened in the anime. There's no direct proof that these two events happened on the same day, but the series of events do imply it. The same happens in the novel translations. These are, at the very least, verifiable facts. May 6th, 2009 is indeed a Wednesday, although I still find it absurd that it would take place during that year.