Silver Week

Of all the things I love about Japan, National Holidays have to be my favorite. Silver Week (like Golden Week, only shorter) was from Sept. 20th-23rd. My friend Jenna from college has been teaching in Fukui prefecture (about 3 hours north of me on the Japan Sea side) since last August and we finally worked it so we could get together. We met in Osaka on the 21st and wandered the city a little. We went to the castle and walked around the park.

This was the biggest castle I've seen in Japan so far. There are golden tigers up near the top which is why Osaka's baseball team is the tigers.

We didn't actually go up in the castle, but we sat in the park catching up and people watching for quite a while. That's where we saw these poor dogs. Even the Japanese people were doing double takes to look at them. I don't know if you can tell from the picture, but their hair is dyed that color.

It seemed like every one's idea of a good time for silver week was to go to Osaka. Several of my friends and many of Jenna's friends were also there. We met up with some friends and went to a really good Thai restaurant where there happened to be a wedding party going on on the first floor. It was pretty loud, and when I had to walk through to get to the bathroom I caught a glimpse of the bride and groom who were pretty normal, except for the giant, gold sequined bow-tie the groom was wearing.

The next day Jenna and I went shopping in Osaka, then came back to Nagoya for Indian food at my favorite restaurant here. Jenna is deprived of any kind of food besides Japanese food, she lives in a rural area of Japan, so she was pretty excited for a change of pace. The next day I showed her a little of the city, mostly from the TV tower (which I had never been in before).

Left is Sakae, the biggest downtown area of Nagoya. Right is Oasis 21, a bus station/shopping and dining area. That's a fountain in the oval on the top. I live about a 3 minute walk from there.

It was a pretty cloudy day so the Nagoya skyline isn't exactly radiant, but on the bottom left is a picture of the Nagoya Castle in the distance. On the right is my apartment building which you could barely make out from the vantage point of the tower. I live on the 7th floor of the side of the building you can sort of see.

It was a good vacation. Osaka was pretty fun and I'd really like to go again for a longer stay. Also now that Jenna has visited me I'm going to visit her as well. She has a car because she has to drive to some of her schools. She says that when she went home over summer vacation it was really disorienting to drive on the right again. I'm pretty excited for my next vacation.

Jenna and me on the observation deck of the TV Tower