Day in the Life of an Idiot

Image: Hello Kitty wishing us a nice trip on the Hello Kitty Shinkansen / Bullet Train

For Children's Day in Japan, Dave (our Canadian ex-pat) took the Hello Kitty Bullet train. I was annoyed by this HeyGo because all of the material for it sad BE ON TIME, leaving promptly when the train departs!! And the time the tour started in Central Time (where I am) was listed as 9:30 pm. I was in the tour ten minutes early and they were clearly well on their way. I checked and double checked because I did not want to miss seeing the exterior. The next HeyGo of interest was with Yusuke. I went along on his Golden Week trip to Nagasaki. Nagasaki is on the Kyushuu Island. As his tour notes say, "Because of its location, rather closer to China than Tokyo, Nagasaki has played an essential role in connecting the nation to the outside world. Especially during the Edo (Tokyo) period (1603 – 1867), the government closed the country from outside the world to prevent the country from foreign influence, except Korea, China, and Holland." So part of what we looked while we were walking around was Oranda-zaka, the Dutch Slope.  

There are several Western-style mansions (that survived the atomic bomb)  that are open to the public. 


Image: Western enclave in Nagasaki

I was not able to stay for the whole tour, but apparently they also visited Japan's oldest Christian church. As I learned from watching Samurai Champloo, Christianity was outlawed in Japan and was a crime you could be, of all ironic things, crucified for.  The secret history of Christianity in Japan is something that shows up periodically in anime. It also featured strongly in an anime series that I adored (but had some issues with at the end) called Kids on the Slope, which I reviewed here: https://mangakast.wordpress.com/2015/07/26/kids-on-the-slope-anime-review-and-thought-about-josei/ (This is one of the very few times that I reviewed an anime as an anime, without a corresponding manga on my site.)

Anyway, this tour was fascinating for its history. As you can see from the above, it was not really a "postcard" friendly tour. 

But, speaking of postcard friendly... the last tour I took was to the Nagamineyama rest stop/observation area.


The snow caped  Northern Alps as viewed from the Nagamineyama rest stop near Azumino City, Nagano Prefecture.

What was fun about last week, of course, is that a lot of the Japanese HeyGo-ers were just taking us along to the places that they'd decided to visit as part of the Japanese Holiday known as Golden Week. Many hardcore manga fans know Golden Week because it is often the ONLY week (often two week period depending on the serialized manga) when JUMP does not publish. I don't know if it's still true, but, in the past, there was much bemoaning here in the West when the next chapter of Bleach was delayed due to this fairly baffling holiday (it's generally described as "The Emperor's Birthday," but there are actually several holidays that make up Golden Week, including Children's Day.) 

Anyway, because it is a full week off, a LOT of Japanese folks will take advantage of the time and go on a vacation. It follows so closely on Hanami that a lot of people will take a couple of weeks, the first to go view the cherry blossoms and then to see whatever else. Clearly, Toshi just wanted to see the Northern Alps and so we went along with him. He was the guy who tried to give us the spectacular ocean view of this mountain range, but we were rained out.

It was a good week for virtual travel.