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Koyasan!
Zach and Vishal....enjoying the mountain sakura (cherry blossoms). Since Koya is a higher altitude, the cherry blossoms don't bloom until late in the season. Japanese Vocab: GW: Golden Week
shuriken: ninja stars
nihon-ichi: number one in Japan
yasumi: break, vacation, holiday
onsen: public bath house/hot spring with communal showers and large communal baths
So in California I remember that up until high school, we had this little week long break (outside of winter break) in February, always around my birthday and President's Day, that was usually called "Ski Week" or something. I mean, officially it was probably called President's Day/Week or something completely bogus like that, but it was basically a week off so people could go out skiing in Tahoe and such.
Here in Japan, we have Golden Week, where they line up a couple of holidays in a row to take out most of the week so families can travel. The government even helps out by subsidizing gas cost (usually 155-160 yen/$1.40 a liter) by about 40 yen, bringing it down to about 120 yen per liter/$1.10 so family travel by car is cheaper for about a month. And since they are national holidays, not just school holidays, parents also get a little break from work and can spend time vacationing with the family and
the international cafe
A small, hip little art gallery/cafe in Koyasan run by a Japanese man and his French wife. Here are Zach, Tony and Nick waiting for their meal. get out of the city to visit the countryside or other famous places in Japan. Which is good.
What's NOT so good about it is that they ALL leave the cities and their homes, en masse, causing major traffic and ensuring that any festival or famous site that you go to will be completely PACKED with families of tourists. Also, travel prices, other than railway, in Japan go up making local flights and international flights quite expensive.
This year, the holidays didn't line up so well...since two of them fell on the weekend (Constitution Day and Green Day) instead of mid-week, we only got two days of the week off...a substitute holiday (since one of the days was on the weekend) and children's day. Soooo, it was really more like Golden Week(end), which is better than nothing I guess. At any rate, friends got to come up and visit us from the south and central parts of Wakayama and we had a busy long weekend traveling around to some local places.
People drove up on Saturday night (which took ages because of GW traffic) and everyone crashed at my apartment....my SMALL apartment...in total 9 people slept in
my humble abode which consists of exactly one bathroom, one shower room, a kitchen, a living room and a bedroom. And a balcony. Yuuuuuuuuuup...it was pretty cozy.
Anyhow, Sunday morning we headed out by train to Koyasan, the local mountain temple and supposedly the origin and HQ of Shingon Buddhism in Japan. After hiking up to the peak from the nearest train station (40 minutes, uphill, steep...), Zully, the JET station there, took us on a walking tour around the mountain, starting with lunch at the International Cafe, this funky little artsy cafe run by a Japanese man and his French wife. After a nice lunch of Indian food and warm chocolate cake, we headed around to the main temple sites in Koya and also through the big graveyard. Even though I've aready been there 3 times or so, it was really cool because I had never actually gone inside any of the temples and Zully, being a local, knew all the good spots. We got to looks at some really old painted screens inside one of the temples, which also housed the largest rock garden in Japan.
After our tour of Koya, we all headed to the
haha...twins!
Which is Ryan an Which is Nick...hmmmm same stride, same clothes (except one's a bit baggier) and same man purse action going on... local onsen, which was SOOOOOOOOOOOO CROWDED...naked women and children everywhere! We even had to wait for showers...which we never have to do since it's a small, local onsen. We ended up eating dinner first at the local brewery that is attached to the onsen since it closes early on Sunday nights. Our friend Vishal used to be a beer brewer back in Trinidad so he got all excited being in a brewery again and explained, with scientific precision, the process of brewing beer...which I no longer remember, but it was really interesting.
The next day, we got up EARLY to catch our train at 6:50am and headed out to our neighboring Nara-ken to Iga-Uenoshi...a town that claims to be Nihon-ichi for Ninja history. Every year they have a Ninja festival to honor the towns history of farmers turned spy/assassins. Also, for 500 yen ($5 USD) you can dress up like a ninja....which we all did...heeheehee- dooooooooooooooooooorky! Also, it was rainy and humid that weekend and I'm sure we were all suffering and sweating in our stifling, full body ninja suits. We spent the day running around town in ninja suits, posing for pics and going through the ninja museum...yuuuuuuuuuuuuup.
We got back in time for dinner at our trusty Souko Izakaya and followed it up with an amazing karaoke session. All in all the perfect ending to a perfect golden week!
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Zach
non-member comment
My favorite is struggling ninja and the give up shot! Haha I wonder what people must feel about of us dressing up as ninjas, going around town, and taking amazing photos. That's right - envy!