Golden Week break

Here's a bit of a late wrap-up of Golden Week.  While we didn't get an Easter Break or ANZAC day, we did get a stretch of holidays, leading to two consecutive long weekends, one a three-day weekend, the other a four-day weekend.  We managed to get a nice bit of sightseeing done on our days off, and here's a bit of a summary below:

On the Saturday of the second long weekend, we went to Minami-Machida, not too far away from where we live.  It's a nice shopping district with a lot of outlet shops and family restaurants.  We saw the most families with dogs out that we'd seen in one place since we arrived that day.  I later found out that that particular Saturday was a holiday designated as "Children's day", so a lot of families were out and about having lunch out or on their way to a picnic nearby.  Our aim was to go to Nitori, a furniture and homewares shop, to have a look for some curtains and scope out what there was on offer.

We ended up going to lunch first, at Outback Steakhouse, an American-owned, Australian-themed restaurant.  We got there as they were opening, so we got the full effect of the welcoming.  In most restaurants and shops in Japan, people are greeted by "Irasshaimase", which means "welcome" (roughly). Because this place was Australian themed, we got the onslaught of "Irasshaimase g'day mate", which was hilarious.  Every time it happened (which was frequently), we'd start laughing all over again.  The food was really good, but you can tell it's American-owned, not much was Australian about it.

On our way out of the steakhouse and towards Nitori, we came across a street performer re-enacting the sinking of the titanic.  He played the ship, and ended the scene by dunking his head in a bucket of water.  It was great, and brightened the day a bit more.

Photos from our day in Minami-Machida are HERE.

The following day, we went out to Kamakura, a pretty popular sightseeing spot full of temples, shrines and historic architecture.  It's also got a few popular surf beaches, so it has a lot of tourists year-round, but it's particularly busy during Golden Week.

Kamakura is home to Daibutsu, a giant statue of Buddha that is housed in a temple called Kotoku-in.  We couldn't have picked a better day to visit, it was warm and sunny, and we got out early enough to beat the big crowds.  Daibutsu is hollow, and is big enough for people to fit.  We could have gone inside the statue, but the line was a little too long, and we decided we'd save it for another day because we don't live too far away from Kamakura.

Photos from our visit to Daibutsu and Kotoku-in are HERE.

After we finished up in the temple, we walked to the beach nearby, but it was so windy we couldn't do much apart from walk along the sand.  The windsurfers took full advantage of the gusty conditions though, they were dotted up and down the seafront.

PICS HERE!

It was hard to go back to work after that weekend, but we made the most of our time off, and already have plans for the next time we go out to Kamakura.

I've got some more photos from the current weekend, but I've yet to upload them, it'll wait for another blog post.  The big news from the last couple of days is that Jason has a job!  In his field too, which is a big relief for him.  Details to follow in the next post.