Golden Week!

For those that don't know, towards the beginning of May there's a long string of national Japanese holidays, and it's given the name Golden Week. Pretty much everyone in Japan has the whole week off other than those unfortunate souls who happen to live near a popular tourist destination. For me, Golden Week started on April 27th. On the last night of work before Golden Week, I went out drinking with my co-workers at a yakitori (grilled chicken) restaurant, which was delicious. It was also kindof a welcome party for the two new staff members that had recently joined the school. As rare as it happens, it's always nice to go out and have a good time with everyone in the office.

On the first Sunday of Golden Week (which was in reality before the official start of Golden Week), Cheryl and I went to Hakone. After two trains, a cable car, and two sections of ropeway, we made it up to Lake Ashi. All along the way there are great views of Mt. Fuji and we were blessed with clear weather so we could take plenty of pictures. The area is famous for hard-boiled eggs which are black on the outside. Supposedly by eating one you extend your life by 7 years. We wanted to get some, but since they were only sold in packs of 5 and neither of us are that crazy about eggs we opted not to. I did get some egg-flavored ice cream though, which was pretty darn good. It tasted like custard, which was fine by me. At the lake we rented a paddleboat and went around part of the lake a bit. It was a pretty nice excursion with the small exception of when one of the big sightseeing boats suddenly turned and came straight towards us. It was just a little too close for comfort, but after some furious paddling we did manage to get out of its way. After the leg workout we got back on the ropeway and headed back to the station where we had left our luggage in a locker. We ate Italian for dinner (which was delicious) and after two buses made it to the B&B where we were staying. It was a pretty interesting place. Our room had two beds, a couch, and a TV. All the facilities were shared, but we had access to everything you'd have available in a home: bathroom, shower, a kitchen with a microwave, foot massagers, a hot-spring style bath, and a long line of vending machines...OK, so everything available in a home plus a typical street corner.

A big black stone egg with Mt. Fuji in the background

Me with my egg flavored ice cream, swirled with vanilla for safety

Me getting into our bird-shaped paddle boat

The following day we went to Yunnesun, a big bathhouse/water park. There are a lot of different kinds of baths there, so it was pretty easy to spend the whole day there. The main room just has a big heated pool where kids can play, they have a few events throughout the day, and cold water occasionally sprays out of jets to simulate rain. Just up the stairs from there are the roman-style bathtubs and the aroma room. One of the highlights was the doctor fish, which is a shallow pool you just put your feet in. The idea is that when you stick your feet in, these tiny little fish swim up to them and eat the dead skin cells and "clean" your feet. I'm not sure if that's what they did, but it sure felt weird - like 20 tiny vacuums sucking on your feet simultaneously and without regard to where you're ticklish...strange, but definitely an experience worth writing home about. The main complex also contains a special section that changes every few months. In that section we bathed in various teas: straight tea, lemon tea, and milk tea, which was pretty cool. Outside the main building there's a water slide and a small cave with a waterfall at the mouth. Everything's heated so despite it being rather cold and windy outside we were able to go down every slide and swim through the cave quite comfortably. After that, we crossed over to a different section of the complex where they have a bunch of special baths. Name it, and you can probably bathe in it there: coffee, wine, green tea, sake, and a rose-infused bath were the interesting ones. We spent a little time in every type of bath they had there...even the ice-cold one (which would have been regularly cold on a warmer day) by sticking our feet in for a few seconds, haha. One enjoyable part was the event at the coffee bath where they add more coffee to the bath by pouring it on kids heads and slowly build it into an all-out coffee fight against one unlucky Yunnesun staff member.
 

Me bathing in milk tea

And green tea

Tuesday started out pretty cloudy, but we took a bus down to the south end of Lake Ashi, left our bags in a locker again and walked around. There's an observation point where on a clearer day we would have been able to see Mt. Fuji, but at least we took pictures of the gardens and flowers there. We walked a section of the avenue of cedar trees, and visited a shrine that we stumbled upon on the way, stopping to buy good-luck-charms. We ate curry-udon for lunch and then started making our way to our next destination: Ito, on the Izu peninsula. By then it was drizzling, so after finding our hotel we killed some time in the hotel room with a wooden puzzle we found on the coffee table (which was actually quite challenging and fun). The town looked virtually abandoned, which from what I read later may have been due to struggles after the economic downturn a few years ago, but we did manage to find a popular seafood restaurant for dinner. In the morning it was still raining so we voted to cancel our plan to go to the cactus/capybara park. At $18 a head we may leave that for a daytrip on a sunny weekend. Instead, we made our way back on the trains and hung out at Terrace Mall. We ate ramen for lunch (which was fantastic...some of the best ramen I've had) and then waited for our movie to start. We watched the new Captain America movie, then found our way back to my apartment for dinner.

Cheryl and me at the gate in Lake Ashi

The view of Mt. Fuji from across lake Ashi. Through the magic of technology I was able to get a clear shot despite the clouds!

The wood puzzle provided by the hotel in Izu. After a lot of playing around we managed to make all the shapes on the box.

On Thursday we went to Akihabara, nicknamed "Electric Town." It's a section of Tokyo known for selling all kinds of electronics, comics, and anime-based paraphernalia. We played a couple UFO-catcher games, where I managed to win a Hatsune Miku figurine in only 3 attempts (600 yen total, which is pretty awesome if I say so myself). We also played an awesome touch-screen game. Imagine Guitar Hero but on a giant circular touch screen where "notes" move from the center of the screen towards the outside, and you have to touch them as they hit the outer ring. Immense fun (note to Cheryl: We're playing that again before I leave Japan :p ). After that we grabbed a doughnut and perused some stores in Akihabara before taking the train a couple stations to Tokyo Dome. There we met Rodney and his girlfriend for a baseball game. Tokyo Dome is a massive indoor baseball stadium, which was really impressive. We were one row away from being as far away from the field as one can possibly get, but still had a good time. Each seat came with a beer (yep, that's Japan), and since Cheryl doesn't drink I had two. I also bought some honey mustard with a hot dog underneath it. Overall we had a great time. It was the Yomiuri Giants (home) versus the Swallows (visitors), and we managed to pull out a win. After every home run every Giants fan in the stadium (which was packed) brought out  an orange towel and swung it in the air. Pretty neat to watch, especially as after each home run the electronic scoreboard said "Swing your towel! Swing it noooooooooow!"

Me and the prize I won at the game center

Tokyo Dome, Giants versus Swallows. The Giants won 4-2.

After resting for a day, Cheryl and I went to Kamakura on Saturday. We started out by visiting a nice breakfast restaurant in the morning. We arrived at 9:00 am and were told we could be seated at 1:00 pm. So naturally we decided to find another place to eat, but as we're leaving the guy asks us if the counter is OK...Apparently they don't consider the counter seats on the waitlist, so we got seated right away...Cheryl got a "spring onion fritter" served with spinach, lox, and thinly sliced zucchini. It was pretty darn delicious. I took the safe route with ricotta pancakes served with sliced bananas and honey butter. From there we got back on the train and went to Hase temple. While cherry blossom season was over, there were plenty of other flowers in bloom and Hase has a lot of small garden areas that looked really beautiful. From there we went on a short trail hike (roughly a mile) to another shrine where you can wash your money for good fortune. The line was horrendously long, so we opted to just rest, take pictures, and continue on. Another short walk took us to Kenchoji, an old Zen training ground. There we took more pictures and somehow stumbled upon a calligraphy exhibit where we walked around pretending like we knew what we were looking at. After resting in front of the small pond they have there we made our way back to the station. Overall we hiked quite a bit that day.

The garden at the entrance to Hase temple

Me at the entrance to the small cave at Hase temple

Cheryl and me at the entrance to Zeni-arai Benzaiten Ugafuku Shrine (where you wash your money).

The back of my head and the path into Zeni-arai Benzaiten Ugafuku Shrine

The pond at the zen meditation grounds

On Sunday, while Cheryl recuperated from the day before, I continued the hiking theme by meeting two of my students near Mt. Oyama, where we hiked to the top. It was my first time going hiking with these two and we had a really good time. This was the "prime time" of Golden Week so there were quite a few people but it wasn't overly crowded. After hiking up the mountain and back down, we stopped at a restaurant for tofu. Because the area has a lot of natural springs, the clean water is used to make high-quality tofu, so that's what the area is famous for. We went through a course meal of different kinds of tofu, of which all were really good. Among the dishes were sesame-wasabi tofu, fried tofu with vegetables,  tofu-conyaku salad, and a tough tofu skin wrapped around ground beef to make a sort-of dumpling. Everything was delicious and I'm glad my students took me there. It was the kind of place I probably would have been too nervous to try on my own.

This literally tells hikers to go left for the "women's trail" and right for the "men's trail." Haha.

This is a spring with supposedly super-pure water. I drank some from my hands, but didn't feel like chugging what I had in my water bottle just to make room.

A neat stop on the way up the mountain. These are called the "husband and wife" trees because they used to be separate trees and then grew together.

About 2/3 of the way up the mountain there's a cool lookout point that's popular for taking pictures. If you look closely in the background you can see the snow on top of Mt. Fuji (it looks like a wisp of cloud, but it's there).

And that's Golden Week. The last couple of days of vacation were used for resting, laundry, and playing video games. I hope everyone is having a great spring! I know I did.

Interesting tidbits:

• I recently started teaching a baby-level English class (for one-year olds). Between the first and second lesson I had with her, my student increased in age by 1.9%....wow.
• A couple nights ago, while out drinking with Rodney and some students, I ate raw squid sashimi (sashimi  = sushi without rice). Imagine a whole squid the size of your thumb, and that's what I ate...not something I plan on experiencing again anytime soon...blech.
• Evidence that humor doesn't translate: I was the only one laughing during Captain America.
• After living in my apartment for 10 months, I found out I indeed can see Mt. Fuji from my front door. It's no wonder it took that long considering you can pretty much only see the very peak before 8:00 am on a super clear day over the top of the building across the street and through a web of phone lines. But it's there.
• Last night I made my first purchase on Japanese Amazon. No Japanese credit card? No problem. Just check "convenience store" when you go to pay, they send a bill to your email address, you print it, take it to 7-Eleven, they scan the bar code on the bill, and you pay cash for your Amazon purchase. No printer? 7-Eleven has you covered there too.
• A couple nights ago I had the best doughnut ever and it warrants sharing: Imagine a doughnut made of a croissant, with fluffy cream "icing" in the middle and light maple icing on top.