<P> Date and time notation in Japan has historically followed the Japanese calendar and the nengō system of counting years . At the beginning of the Meiji period, Japan switched to the Gregorian calendar on Wednesday, 1 January 1873, but for many domestic and regional government paperwork, the Japanese year is retained . Japanese business and the people have also adopted various conventions in accordance with their use of kanji, the widespread use of passenger trains, and other aspects of daily life . </P> <P> The most commonly used date format in Japan is "year month day (weekday)", with the Japanese characters meaning "year", "month" and "day" inserted after the numerals . Example: 2008 年 12 月 31 日 (水) for "Wednesday, December 31, 2008". The weekday is usually abbreviated to a single character, e.g. 水 for 水曜日 ("Wednesday"), but may also be written in full, then usually without surrounding parentheses . Apart from the Gregorian calendar, the Japanese Imperial calendar is also used, which bases the year on the current era, which in turn is based on the current emperor . The current era is 平成 Heisei and began in 1989 . When using the Imperial calendar, the year is prefixed with the era . For example, the above date using the Imperial calendar is written as: 平成 20 年 12 月 31 日 (水); a more direct translation might be: Heisei year 20, Dec 31 (Wed). </P> <P> Either form may be abbreviated as yy / mm / dd; periods as separators are not uncommon either . Examples: 20 / 12 / 31, 08.12. 31 . Ambiguities as to which calendar is used for the year are usually only resolved by the context in which the date appears, but Imperial calendar dates may be prefixed with a single character or letter denoting the era, e.g. 平 20 / 12 / 31 or H20 / 12 / 31 . This is a shorthand notation and full dates are often the preferred way of resolving such ambiguities . </P>

How do you write the date in japan