Golden Week Ahead

The end of April – beginning of May in Japan has four national holidays in a week. April 29^th is Showa Day (Showa no hi).  Because it falls on a Sunday, the next day (Monday) is the holiday. May 3^rd is Constitution Memorial Day (Kenpo kinenbi). May 4^th is Greenery Day (Midori no hi).  May 5^th is Children’s Day (Kodomo no hi), also known as Boys’ Day (Tango no sekku). It’s considered the busiest holiday week after New Year’s and many people travel over the holidays. I’ll write more about them in the week ahead. Because of the holidays both my Japanese class and my English class will not be held next week. I should have plenty of time to prepare for them both.

The snow continues to melt.  We’ve had a few days with wind and/or rain, which is helping. This is the view out my back window yesterday.

This is what it looked like a week ago. 

The crocuses are popping up everywhere.  I also noticed these little red flowers yesterday. They look like miniature tulips.

Ted paid for our “new” car this week (2005 Subaru Forester).  As soon as all the paperwork is done, the car will be delivered to us. In order to buy a car here, one has to get a certificate from the city proving there is a parking space for the car. The university assigned us a parking space outside our apartment building and the city inspector came out yesterday and measured the space.  Buying a car is a complicated process here and I’m glad Ted has been taking care of all the details.

I’ve been continuing with my spring cleaning.  As I wrote earlier, one thing always turns into two. I plan to finish with the cleaning and organizing this weekend.  A clean house is a good thing. I think it’s golden.