Byodo-in and Kiyomizu - Kyoto

Zen

Golden Week

Golden Week is over.  The Japanese have settled back down into their working schedules after as many as nine days away from the dreary life of the salaryman.  English classes have resumed and students are back in school. 

Kinkakuji - The Golden Pavillion in Kyoto

This is one of the three times a year that all Japanese workers and students have time off.  The first week of May, several holidays combine to create the oasis known as Golden Week.  What is particularly interesting is that few (if any) students and coworkers I asked knew more than one or two of the holidays that make up Golden Week.  It has become little more than a time to drink as much alcohol as possible, much the way that Easter Vacation has transformed into the modern Spring Break. 

Being a foreigner, you have no choice but to fall victim to the drastic increases in ticket and hotel prices during these times.  Your best bet is to try to plan the most popular sites on the 1st and 2nd of May.  These two days are not national holidays so schools are in session and most people work.  Even so, expect to pay double for a Shinkansen ticket only to find yourself packed into tourist sites like sugar molecules in a can of Red Bull. 

Excuse my poor attempt to avoid using the traditional “sardine” simile here and focus on the moral of the story: Golden Week is not the best time to plan your trip to Japan.  My brother and I were "lucky" enough to spend the rainiest day of the week in Kyoto.  We were quite wet, but crowds weren't so bad.  

The best way to enjoy your time off is to partake in the hundreds of barbecues taking place in any given square-kilometer.  As I mentioned in the recent “Hanami” post, spring is the happiest time in Japan.  The joy that I experienced a few weeks ago was nothing compared to what the past week has been like.  Parks are filled with large group barbecues all week.  I guarantee that somebody in your business, school, or community will invite you to at least one during this time.

Not your average kites

It’s also festival season.  The most difficult decision you’ll have to make during your time off is which festival to attend and which food to purchase while you’re there.  I chose the tako-matsuri, or kite festival in neighboring Hamamatsu City.  What I had imagined were large groups of little children flying their homemade kites around near the beach.  Silly gaijin, why would it ever be that anticlimactic in Japan?  Those are not kites by Japanese standards.  Instead, when I emerged from the bamboo-lined walkway, I was greeted by a crashing 9ft x 9ft dragon-faced entanglement of rope, canvas and drunken Hamamatsu residents playing a repetitive one-line melody on bugles.  All the while, the twenty-five people taking part in the flying of the kite continue to scream the Japanese equivalent of “heave-ho” and down as much sake and Asahi Super Dry as their light frames can handle.  It’s like Oktoberfest with dinner table-sized projectiles flying in all directions.  I recommend that one of your party stand watch at a time so that he or she may warn those looking through viewfinders when to run for you lives. 

Children take a break from the tako-matsuri 

When the battlefield becomes too overwhelming, most would make the short walk to the beach for a little R&R before heading back into the storm.  Don’t mistake my violent description here, for I recommend this festival to anyone in the Aichi/Shizuoka area during Golden Week.  It’s absolutely fantastic.

After the kite festival, we made our way to the International Food Festival to await the start of the night parade and city street festival.  Traditional Japanese performers, food so good it made me want to leave Japan, and German beer make for a happy Seth.  It’s been a long time since I was able to taste a good Bavarian käsekreiner.

For observers of the street festival, it’s a good time to relax.  The post-sunset action can be enjoyed from restaurants overlooking the parade route or along the sidewalk.  It’s a great time to let the combination of tradition and modern fluorescent lighting remind you of why you chose to come to Japan in the first place.  The longer I’m here, the more I truly appreciate the uniqueness of these community events and understand why the Japanese take them so seriously.  As Eastern life becomes the norm, I require more and more shock to take me back to the mindset that inspires the cheesiest of travel blog writing.  The idealistic lens through which any traveler views a new place is being slowly replaced by the more pessimistic microscope of a long-time resident.  It feels refreshing to get out and experience something that reminds me of how lucky I am to be amongst these people in such a capacity and help me to fall in love with the uniqueness of their culture all over again.

"Yes, I can use chopsticks: the everyday 'microaggressions' that grind us down" - Japan Times

This is a fantastic article passed along my a friend (who has been here 25 years, speaks Japanese, has a Japanese child, and owns his own company) about how foreigners will never be able to fully assimilate into Japanese culture.


http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/fl20120501ad.html

花見 (hanami) - Flower Viewing

Kids hanami parade

Blue tarp required

桜

Cherry Blossom Time

“Just wait until the first week of April.”

“Sakura time is the best in Japan.”

“It’s the best 5 days of the year.”

The only time I’ve ever heard a group of people speak with such anticipation of a 4-5 day period, I was 10 and discussing Christmas Break with my friends at recess.  I’ve been here 5 months now and have never mentioned my October arrival time without a local or foreigner immediately bringing up the topic of sakura, or Japanese cherry blossoms. 

I know spring is exciting.  It’s warming up.  You’re on the brink t-shirt and/or skirt season.  The world becomes lively and colorful again.  However, in my home state of California, not much changes.  Surfers switch to spring wetsuits to mark the occasion, but that’s pretty much it.  Japan is different.  Few countries in the world have such distinct seasons.  Fall is beautifully painted red, orange, and yellow.  Winter is bitterly cold and dry on the east coast and a constant snow bombardment in the west.  Summer is infamously hot and oppressively humid.  Spring, I’m told, may be the closest human beings get to experience some kind of paradise in a lifetime.  Yellow canola flowers pop up along rivers and roads early on, bringing much needed color to the bare winter landscape.  Next come the plum trees with their deep purple and dark pink blossoms.  I am, by no means, passionate about flowers (sorry Mom), but the plum trees are awe inspiriting to say the least.  As exciting as they were to me, the Japanese seemed surprisingly uninterested.  All they continued to talk about were the sakura. 

Plum Blossoms in March

Americans know these blossoms well.  Washington DC has embraced them as their own for much of the past century.  It should be said, to knock DC off of its high horse, that these were actually a gift from Japan.   In 1912, the mayor of Tokyo presented the trees to Washington as a way to symbolize the growing relationship between the two nations and the hope for peace in the future (oops).  Either way, the blossoms have since become a world icon.

In Japan, this week has been more exciting that Christmas and New Year combined.  Always kind and polite, my host population has suddenly become happy and outgoing.  “All of this for some little pink and white flowers,” I thought.  Pictures only make me think of the popcorn tree art project my friend Steven and I made in kindergarten.

Cherry Blossoms

I was wrong, these aren’t just flowers.  Every single naked tree in Toyokawa, Shinshiro, and Toyohashi is a cherry tree patiently waiting for these 5 special days when they can play peacock for our enjoyment.  Lines of trees turn to blossom tunnels that hang gracefully over streets and riverbeds.  Parks are framed in pink, school yards are hidden behind walls of flora, and your eyes are finally distracted from the bland concrete architecture for which Japan has become famous.  They’re everywhere, and I’m feeling really excited as well.  I guess Scrooge has fallen to the happy epidemic sweeping the country.  

More blossom pictures to come soon!