Gilded Life In Golden Week

Golden Week is the name for the annual 5-day weekend at the beginning of May.  It seems as if the whole country travels, often internationally, because taking time off from work is so rare.  I've heard that it observably affects tourism in the United States.  Therefore, me and many of my friends decided not to travel outside our area.  We spent the weekend traveling between regional cities to see several spring festivals.

First up was the Toyama Tulip Festival.

There are crazy breeds of tulips from around the world at the Tulip Festival.  Apparently they introduce a new breed every year, but we couldn't figure out where that was.

Shades of last year's baseball game.

From the Tulip Tower...

The next day we headed up to Wajima in a caravan of cars to visit some friends and visit some rural parks.  There was a small taiko drum performance going on when we got there.

Then it was on to the Dekayama festival in Nanao.  Very similar to some of the town festivals in the fall that I went to, the Dekayama festival involves a couple giant floats which get dragged around the streets of Nanao (a city 90 minutes north of Kanazawa) to singing, dancing, and merriment over three nights.  About a hundred people, culled from the crowd, are needed to pull the floats around.

In a fit of inspiration, a bunch of us decided to do what only children do and climb inside the float.  It's absolutely amazing, only held together by ropes and wood blocks.  Those rope clusters are under enormous tension, but totally solid.

For the last festival day of Golden Week, we tried to get back down to Uchinada beach outside of Kanazawa for the international kite festival, but we didn't get down in time to see the cool stuff.  People come from all over the world to fly enormous (100 foot-long) kites, but by the time we got there there were only some stunt-kiters practicing and hanging out.

I didn't take enough pictures by half, but Golden Week was fantastic.  The weather suddenly and divinely broke into wonderful perfection, and I spent the whole time with cool people bumming around my area.  No responsibilities, little cares, and great new things to see.