GW ain't just a Bush in Japan

One thing Japan doesn't lack is national holidays. April 29th kicked off the start of Golden Week (aka GW), the longest stretch of holidays during the year. April 29th was Green Day, no relation to the band, it came about from a past Emperor's love of nature, I’m not sure what folks here traditionally do on Green Day, I think I watched a couple movies though. Next comes Constitution Day on May 2nd, with a name that squelches any desire for further investigation, your boring guess is probably right, then May 3rd, which I think is the real jewel of all holiday’s in Japan is unofficially In-Between Day, just a freebie thrown in to connect Constitution Day with Children's Day on May 4th so everyone gets three days off in a row.

Good time for a road trip, so I hopped in my friend Amy's toaster shaped car along with Claire and Jez and we drove five hours to Kyushu, the western island of Japan. The highlight of the car trip was when Claire relented and let me thrown some of her hard boiled eggs out the window at a concrete wall. After one night in a non-descript city called Kokura, we drove down to Beppu a city of about 100,000 known Japan-wide for it's quality hot springs. It hosts two types of hot springs, ones for bathing called onsen and ones purely for watching and unfortunately smelling, called Hells. The Hells emit hellish looking smoke and sulfur smells, but give the city a certain mystical edge when driving into its manicured mountain sides, as if the whole area were resting on top of a bubbling caldron. Beppu is also known for its kitsch tourist value and for a museum devoted solely to sex, which is not listed on any tourist maps in town but in the Lonely Planet for the foreign traveler's amusement. And amused we were by its artifacts from bygone brothels and a down right naughty interpretation of Snow White's stay with the Seven Dwarves. The highlight of Beppu was staying at a traditional Japanese style hotel, called a ryokan, where we had use of a private onsen, and then had a traditional Japanese meal brought to our tatami mat room, to be consumed while wearing mint green and purple yukata (lightweight robes), after which the four of us played various games involving lies, truths, and cards into the wee hours…

Then we headed to Kyushu's largest city, Fukuoka and checked into another ryokan. Philip came to meet us and more drunken card games ensued. After the cards we headed to a dance club called the Happy Cock, whose mascot was a quite sinister looking rooster. There rest of our time spent in Fukuoka was either lazing around the ryokan or traipsing through the mega shopping center called Canal City, which the travel guide described as "verging on the sexy." I think Kyushu is doing its best to try and increase the birthrate in Japan, but it was fraught with sexual innuendos at every turn.