An End to the Golden Week

Just a few days ago, Japan's very wonderful Golden Week ended. Golden Week is an almagamation of several holidays into a solid week, which means the average Japanese employee gets only about two to four days off.

As I am amazing for the simple fact that I am a white westerner doing a job that any human being with intelligible English skills can do, I am afforded the luxury of having the whole week (and then some) off.



The holiday started off beautifully. Plenty of sunshine and a plan for a barbecue with as many friends as possible swam through the atmosphere. As I don't have many (really, any) chances to hang out with friends, I was really looking forward to the BBQ. Then we invited some people my wife met to the BBQ. She met them through a mommy meet'n greet group, thinking it would be a good idea for both her and Nolan to socialize with people other than me and the occassional granny who slobbers all over the butterball.

Things quickly became gloomy, both literally and figuratively. Too much planning around their schedule allowed them to take over my barbecue. They completely usurped it when they made reservations at some picnic place on Rokko Mountain, killing any plans for me to meet up with friends - seeing as we don't have any spare cash floating to throw more than one bash.

Turns out that the days we spent waiting for this day to come meant that the sunshiney days were speeding away, and when BBQ day did come, it was cloudy, chilly and generally miserable. Then they were nearly an hour late picking us up. And then - from not eating breakfast because we thought we had to be out of the house early - the fast-paced drive all around the curvy roads of the mountain made us car sick.

And THEN, as it turns out, that instead of the relatively open-spaced river side I wanted the original barbecue to happen on, we get a crowded tourist spot full of crazy kids, obnoxious adults, a dirty koi pond with no carp and a cow that pissed like a firehose, nearly dousing the hot headed children. Well, that was actually pretty funny.

After that, it was a pretty uneventful week at the in-laws, getting none of the work I had planned done.

Then, on the eve of the last day of my vacation, the sun began to liven the place up, just before setting. Back to work.

At least my son seemed to have a good time on Children's Day.