Golden Week!

Golden Week in Japan is a big deal.  It lasts from April 29th through May 5th and includes three national holidays: Showa Day, Greenery Day, and accumulates into Children's Day.  This is probably the biggest (certainly the longest) holiday in Japan, perhaps rivaled by Japanese New Years.  Many Japanese take paid time off from work for the entire week, many companies just close completely to allow their employees time to travel and spend time with their kids.

For Golden Week the school gave us a few days off and we did our best to capitalize on it.  Friday night we did karaoke (quickly becoming my favorite nighttime activity in Japan, I will post about it exclusively later).  We never seem to be able to tear ourselves away from karaoke until 3am, so we usually have to walk back (more on transportation difficulties later), and that Fri. night was no exception.  I made it back home in the morning and spent most of my day Sat. sleeping.  Good thing I went home, one of my friends got in a bit of trouble for partying a bit too hard.

On Sunday, I was able to do something a bit more cultural.  My British friend, Tom and one of our Japanese friends, Yuko, went to a Shinto temple in Takahatafudo.  It was marvelous!  Everything was very pious, very solemn, and uniquely Japanese.  One of my favorite parts of that day was taking a long stroll on this nature trail running off into the woods from the temple.  It was a bit of a hike because the path was rock and dirt and almost vertical.

On Tuesday Pat, Taylor, and I took the train to Mt. Takao, the tallest mountain in our area.  Getting there was a bit of an adventure because we got off on the wrong stop, but we finally got there.  It was incredibly crowded because of the Golden Week festivities but absolutely beautiful.

Finally on Wednesday me and some of he guys went out to Tama Center (it's huge) for the big Children's Day festival.  There were a gajillion people there and way more interesting food than could possibly be sampled.  Tom had some whole fish on a stick, I ate some octopus balls, and we all pigged out and walked around.

Golden Week was amazing, I had more of a culture injection in this one week span than ever before.  It was fun to see the Japanese let their hair down a bit and have some fun.