It’s been a month since I’ve started my life in Japan! I can’t believe it’s been a month.. It feels like I’ve been here forever (okay maybe not forever…but longer than a month). The five other new AETs and I had a week of training before going off to our respective school(s). Technically it’s been three weeks of teaching but my first and second week had a bunch of holidays, also known as Golden Week!
What is Golden Week you ask? Well, it’s a series of holidays in the same week and we get off of work to vacation or do whatever. Since I only knew of one of the holidays, I googled the others…
Showa Day (April 29) in respects to Emporor Showa’s birthday but it’s called Midori something or other.. I think nature appreciation or something… This was the start of the holiday break. Some businesses will start the entire break on this day but for school and teachers it was just a three day weekend for us. I didn’t know this was a holiday so I almost ended up going to school that day. Good thing I only live down the street so it wouldn’t be the most embarrassing thing in the world. It might look a little weird biking around in a suit.
Constitution Day (May 3) for when the new constitution became a thing in 1947. This was the first day of my holiday. I went to the beach on this day. I think from the train station to the beach it was only a 30-40 minute commute. It was a beautiful day for the beach! The sun was out, there was a nice breeze, and it was warm! We surfed, skim boarded, and played in the ocean. The smart thing to do would have been to rent a wet suit but of course I didn’t do that… And I learned my lesson… Yeah I did. But it was a lot of fun! After the beach we went to an onsen that looked over the beach. The view was great but you had to be careful not to stand up all the way otherwise people would see you from the beach… And that could be embarrassing. Being at the beach made me realize that moving back to anywhere not near the ocean will be tough.. So I guess Chicago is not in my future.. Sorry Mom.
Children’s Day (May 5) to pray for health and happiness for children.. It’s pretty awesome. I celebrated the child in me by hiking up Mt. Tsukuba with a group of people. I think it was about an hour drive.. maybe more so we rented a van and drove there. One of the guys in my group was telling me that Mt. Tsukuba was a “senior citizen” mountain. Meaning, that this hike was easy enough for grandparents to do. He was right! There were a lot of grandparents hiking this mountain and they were putting me to shame! That mountain is not a mountain for seniors! It was a lot of fun though and the view was amazing! That’s definitely something I would do again!
(The view from the top of Mt. Tsukuba)
And they just give us May 4 off since it’s in between the two others (according to Google). That was a recovery day from the beach for me! I was still cold the next day so I laid low and went shopping with a friend and we saw Zootopia! In Japanese! Surprisingly I understood enough of Japanese to understand what was going on. I’m still going to rent it and watch it in English. For those of you who haven’t seen the movie, I highly recommend seeing it! It’s very cute!
