🎌 [Holiday travelers] The last day won in all 15 runs!

🎌 3 of the 7 busiest days sit inside a run!

7 days reach the top level, and 3 of them sit inside a run of three days or more. There are only 15 such runs in the year, yet the peaks pile into them.

Include the level below and you get 32 days. Cutting the runs first is the most efficient trim. Peaks do form outside them, so it is not enough on its own.

🏆 The pick was the last day in all 15 runs!?

Find the softest day inside each of the 15 runs and the answer is the last day, every time. Not once did a day in the middle come out softest.

Day three of a three-day run, day 5 of a 5-day run. The first and middle days still have time off ahead of them. The last day is followed by a workday, so both the demand for a room and the room to linger drop away.

📆 Shifting one day outside beats picking a day inside

Inside a run the last day is softest, but stepping outside drops further. Averaged across the 15 runs the first day reads Normal and the last Fairly easy — while the day after the run ends reads Normal, a level below the last day.

The day before the run also came in lower than its first day in all 6 of the 15 runs. Choosing a day inside a run is hunting for low ground on the tallest hill. Move one day either side and you beat anything available inside.

🏖️ Summer break is not the busy one — Obon is!

Compare the breaks on weekdays only and summer reads Packed — barely different from an ordinary weekday with no holiday and no break. Across 0 days of it.

The spike is the 14 days of Obon, and nothing else. Those climb to Fairly easy. It is not "summer break is busy". It is "Obon is busy".

🚀 Treating the three breaks as one thing costs you!

Levelled on weekdays: winter Fairly busy, spring Fairly busy, summer Packed. Winter is the strongest and sits 2 level(s) above summer.

By length it is 0 days of summer, 28 of winter, 34 of spring. Longer does not mean busier. What the weekday itself does takes an article of its own.

🎯 If the run is fixed, the last day is the floor!

For anyone who cannot drop the run itself, here is the size of the trim. First days and last days average 1 level(s) apart, and the last day lands at Fairly easy. Before writing the run off, move to the last day inside it.

There is a floor to it, though. 51 days of the year fall inside a run, and taken one by one the softest of them still reads Easy. Stay inside a run and nothing below that level is on the table.

The 12 runs still ahead are listed at the top of this page, grouped by run with the softest day marked. If your run is already fixed, that list is all you need.