Golden Week

Golden Week- Golden Week is a collection of four national holidays within seven days. In combination with well placed weekends, the Golden Week becomes one of Japan's three busiest holiday seasons, besides New Year and the Obon week.

Trains, airports and sightseeing spots get very crowded during Golden Week, and accommodation in tourist areas can get booked out well in advance.

The national holidays making up the Golden Week are:

* April 29
Showa Day (Showa no hi):
April 29 is the birthday of former Emperor Showa, who died in the year 1989. Until 2006, Greenery Day (see May 4) used to be celebrated on this day.

* May 3
Constitution Day (Kenpo kinenbi):
On this day in 1947, the new post war constitution was put into effect.

* May 4
Greenery Day (Midori no hi):
Until 2006, Greenery Day used to be celebrated on April 29, the birthday of former Emperor Showa. The day is dedicated to the environment and nature, because the emperor loved plants and nature. Before being declared Greenery Day, May 4 used to be a national holiday due to a law, which declares a day, that falls between two national holidays, a national holiday.

* May 5
Children's Day (Kodomo no hi):
The Boy's Festival (Tango no Sekku) is celebrated on this day. Families pray for the health and future success of their sons by hanging up carp streamers and displaying samurai dolls, both symbolizing strength, power and success in life. The Girl's Festival, by the way, is celebrated on March 3.

Steve had about 7 business days off work this past week so we were able to get a few things accomplished. We found the Costco, while they didn't have to much American food we were able to get quite a bit of stuff. Since we live about 45mins away by train and 10min walk from and too the train station, we had everything delivered. The first day we went to Costco, we had to sign up for the card and all that, but we had not realized they only accept Amex and cash. So we ended up just walking through to get an idea and then headed home. The next day we went and did all of our shopping and headed over to the delivery area, we just missed the time for delivery the following day and found out we had to wait 2 days to get our food. We each packed up a box about 25pounds to carry that we needed right away. 25 pounds doesn't seem like much but by the time we got home our arms were about to fall off. Also before going into the Costco, its located near Tokyo Bay so we took a walk down there. People were fishing, boating and having lunch! So Costco literally took up 3 days of our vacation. We also went to Ikea to do more apartment shopping still not done. They were out of the chair we wanted to get. We went for about a 2-3 hour walk along the water near our apartment, we were supposed to go for a run, so I didn't take my camera. We also went hiking up Mt takao and a man made island called Odiaba which is part of the Tokyo area as well as we went to Akiabara which is the electric town where we got all of our appliances! We also played alot of Wii! (Don't forget to visit smugmug)