Golden Week in Japan is a week of more or less consecutive holidays and a weekend in late April/early May. Things kick off with Showa no Hi on April 29th, which was a Thursday this year. Considering Emperor Showa has been dead and gone for a long time, I don't think they actually do much to celebrate the day, at least that I've been made aware of, so most people just treat at as a day off. Because April 30th isn't a holiday, we had school, which kinda stunk, but it was okay because after that we had 5 consecutive days of no school!!!
May 1st and 2nd aren't holidays either, but we got lucky and they fell on weekends this year, so we had more time off ;). Monday the 3rd is Constitution Day. Again...not really so sure they do so much to celebrate this, least of all like we do the Forth of July. The 4th is Midori no Hi, or basically the Japanese version of Earth day because they Japanese are actually hard core tree huggers and have oodles of love for nature. The 5th is the last day of Golden Week and it is known as Boys'/Children's Day. I've heard it said both ways, but I've talked to actual Japanese people and they more or less consider it Boys' Day because the Hina Matsuri in March is widely regarded as the girls' festival. I do know a little bit about this one...basically its a day to honor the boy children of the household and celebrate their good health. And if you have a boy in your house hold, you hang a blue carp banner from the top of your house, one for every boy...or so my Japanese culture textbook tells me.
On Saturday Tony, Shooi, Isshin, Masashi, Kim and I went to Hitachi, a town about 20 minutes away and actually home to one of Ibaraki's 3 campuses (the Engineering one I believe) to go to
Hitachi Kaihin Koen or Hitachi Seaside Park. It was a really strange combination of carnie rides meets (kind of) the beach meets more flowers than I have ever seen in my entire life added together. All the rides are pay as you ride and don't come with admission to the park, and since they're all about 5 bucks a pop, we only road the Ferris Wheel for the views. If you know anything about me, you know that I am not a fan of Ferris wheels by any stretch of the imagination, but this one was actually pretty sturdy and completely enclosed so I did pretty okay...until we got stuck somewhere near the top and I couldn't understand the explanation as to why we had stopped or how long we were going to be stopped and my friends kept teasing me and saying we'd be up there for half an hour...it was more like 2 minutes -_-;...
We then went off the far side of the park to see this hill decked out in this blue/lilac colored flower that I don't actually know the name of. They were beautiful and there were so many O_O. I believe it was Masashi who said "Umi no you ni aoi" which means as blue as the sea...and it really was. There were so many, and when you got to the top, you couldn't see the paths that people were climbing up so it looked like they were bobbing around in an ocean of flowers :)After that we checked out Tulip World (I'm not kidding that's actually the
name of that area of the park) which was gorgeous as well and had tulips so red that they looked like they were glowing. We grabbed lunch in a building made of glass with an infinity pool out front looking over the ocean before heading home to Mito because Tony and I found out we had another E.S.S. Nomikai at the vice-president's house. :DThe Nomikai was fun, as per usual. We had some Japanese treats and just laughed and talked about anything and everything. Things did get a little interesting when I caught one of the guys just staring at me and I asked him "What? Is there something wrong?" because I thought I had gotten some of the food I had just eaten on my face (not unusual for me). When he said no I replied by telling him in Japanese "well you were staring at me."
Now don't get me wrong...getting stared at in Mito is not at all a weird a event in of itself (in fact when we biked to Mito station early in the day it was Masashi who was weirded out by how many people stared at Tony and I...and we just told him the honest truth...that we've stopped noticing at this point), however getting stared at by someone who actually knows me is very odd.
His response was...nothing like I was expecting since the Japanese like to beat around the bush. In front of about 15 people he just turned to me and blurted out "You're sexy." To make matters even weirder, as far as I can tell, Japanese seldom use the adjective "sexy"...I'm used to being told I'm very cute because of my blond hair (since everything is "cute" in Japan), but sexy was just a whole 'nother ball game O_O
Sunday Tony and I met with Yasu and Takami, (Tony's tutor) and went to Kairakuen, supposedly one of the three most beautiful gardens in Japan...though Yasu said when they first built it, it was actually to be a kind of army type headquarters....but since you weren't able to legally build those, they disguised it as a garden. :)I think it had a lot to do with the fact that it wasn't cherry blossom season, but while I thought it was really pretty, I don't think it was the most beautiful garden I've ever seen. All the same, it was a lot of fun and there were some really nice views over lake Semba. We toured the feudal lord's house and Yasu acted as our tour guide because two years ago he was a tutor to a Korean student and had taken him there. We quickly prayed at the Tokiwa shrine that was right next to the gardens before taking a quick bike ride through Semba to head to the Drunken Duck.
The Drunken Duck is basically an English speaking Australian pub in downtown Mito. Tony
really wanted to go just because they name was funny and he randomly discovered it one day, Yasu wanted to go because of the English, I just wanted to hang out with everyone and poor Takami just kinda got dragged into it, though I do think he had fun and enjoyed his Cuba Libre. It was actually really cool and they were looking to hire native speakers, which Tony and I really wanted to do, but on our VISA, we're not allowed to work :(.Takami had to split after the Drunken Duck, but Tony, Yasu and I
headed back to my place for tacos! On Wednesday when we were at school, we tried to explain to Yasu what tacos were and he was so completely and utterly befuddled by the concept, so we told him we'd make him some. He really and truly could just not wrap his head around the fact that we were saying the word "Taco" 
but that there was no octopus involved.Tony cooked up the food and basically at every possible stage throughout the Taco preparation process he would keep asking, "Okay, is it a Taco now?!", and was
disappointed every time we said "Not yet". We sat down at the table and he asked again "Okay, so is this a Taco now?"...so we of course had to walk him through the process of how to make a Taco, which was hysterical to watch. His facial 
expressions had me laughing until I cried and we literally just took a slide show of 
pictures of him being amazed by the process of assembling a taco. He did fine with the making part, but the actual eating part...well...that took a great deal more practice before he finally got the, as he liked to say "hang of it."Monday was Constitution Day, so Tony, Masashi, Shooi, Mina, Kim, Elena, Isshin, Marina all got together and went to Ooarai, a beach 30 minutes from Mito and supposedly one of the best beaches in the Kanto region...which was interesting because it was
very much in the middle of no where and the train station didn't even have turn stiles...you had to have your ticket looked at by an attendant. When we finally got to the beach, Isshin informed us we were signing up for a giant tug of war type event, but it turned out that we actually weren't because they all ready had to many people signed up...so we just hung around the beach.The Japanese beach going experience is very...interesting...The water
was to cold to actually go full on swimming, so I understand not a lot of people being out in the water in swim suits...but people were really and truly dressed and dressed well...I saw people in full length pants and shirts, jackets, shoes...the whole nine yards. It was very surreal to be on a beach and look around and see that everyone was dressed; not a bathing suit in sight aside from my Ukrainian friend. They also have this obsession with digging for shells. There were literally hundreds of people covered in sand and muck (and did I mention that they still had on all their clothes on?) digging for shells with shovels at the waters edge. It was very weird. Oh yes, and Japanese children seem to be quite found of getting really dirty (seriously would hate to be the parent that has to do 
that laundry) and then just taking off all their clothes...and no one cares O_OOf course because the Japanese have this abhorrence of dark skin, people came out with tents, umbrellas as big as my bed and huge sun hats...so of course Tony, Marina, Elena and I got a lot of funny looks when we just laid out in the sun on our blankets.
We wandered around the shopping outlets where at every other store was either something sportswear related, a shoe store or something to do with Hawaii and I watched a Monkey mascot run around getting its tail pulled by children. Regarding children, I've noticed that while they're very reserved when they grow up, Japanese children can pretty much do whatever they want and their parents won't reprimand them ever,
which includes throwing tantrums in public, publicly stripping, rudely staring at foreigners and running away from them down the street. Its really, really weird and I'm still trying to figure out at which point the spoiled child transforms into the reserved Japanese person I'm coming to know and love. O_o....Have I mentioned this is very bizarre yet?Well...that's all for now...today is a school work today but tomorrow I'm going with Tony and Marina to Tokyo to meet up with Kana and Yuka!!
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