Your Japanese word of the week is...

"otsukaresama". While I'm not sure of it's direct translation, the kanji for it is the same as the one for "tired", but in this particular form, it's the equivalent of a day's end "Job well done/good work". It's often heard when someone finishes a day of work or can be said to someone who's just finished something particularly strenuous (we say it lots after training, for example). A more polite version is "otsukaresamadeshita".

People rarely congratulate themselves after a big event, but I'm abstaining from the humble pie for a second to recall just how I managed to get past my 4-day Golden Week which went from an easy "take my time doing stuff" weekend to a non-stop thrash that essentially had me stay out for 4 days straight........

I'd like to note I posted this in parts because I think it makes it slightly easier to read or comment on. If you lose track, just follow the "Golden Week" label on the right to organize them all.

Day 1-

It started on Saturday with a 9am bus ride from Tokyo to Japanese Kelowna (also known as Aizu Wakamatsu in the Fukushima Prefecture). The bus was a real mistake since everyone else was heading out of town for the holidays too, so my 4hr bus ride ended up being 6hrs. Turns out I could've taken the train from my station to Aizu in the same 4hrs and at the same cost. But no matter! Aizu is one of those towns that, because it's sort of out there by itself, ends up being big enough to have some of everything but small enough that there isn't a lot of everything. They do have some rather historic sights though, and Peter took me to see the 3 main ones.

Arriving nice and late, I met with Peter and we headed off to the first sight, which is Iimoriyama Mountain (hill...), where 20 teenage boys of the Byakkotai (White Tiger) group in 1868 all committed seppuku. It was during this time that the city of Aizu was embroiled in a larger civil war and these boys, having mistaken a burning building for that of their castle, committed suicide. That their castle wasn't in fact burning marks the site as one of deep tragedy. Beyond that, one of the boys survived and lived on to tell the tale.

Also at Iimoriyama is a statue of a fascist eagle, the inscription looking distinctly Italian and the Roman numbers dating it at 1928. To the right of it is a much smaller stone slab with a Nazi iron cross on it. Apparently a gift by a German diplomat in recognition of the aforementioned Byakkotai boys, American soldiers eventually noticed the swastika on the stone and had it erased. Regardless, there it stands stoicly brandishing the iron cross.

Down the other side of the mountain is some quaint natural scenery and a house which seems to only contain two ramps arranged in a double helix. Why?? I don't know......... but the rest of the area was quite nice and pleasantly accented with the small streams of water that flow from a nearby cave.




After Iimoriyama, we headed to the Tsuruga Castle, the same one that those unforunate Byakkotai boys thought was burning. Though interior tours were closed for the day, we did walk the grounds and take in the disctintly Japanese approach to gardens- the intriguing mix of making the plants look like they grew there naturally but actively altering them so they don't look natural.

At night, we met one of Peter's friends and headed to a bar/lounge to play some darts (electronic darts, being Japan) and meet his friend's friends. Nearly all of them went home at 11pm............. guess it's not gonna be a long night out...........