More Golden Week Travel

Golden Week happens at the end of every April and beginning of every May. There are four national holidays right in a row, (Green Day, Constitution Memorial Day, National Holiday Day, and Children's Day) and depending on where they land on the calendar, people can squeeze up to a 10 day vacation out of their lives with taking only using a precious few days of paid-time off.
Like I mentioned a few days ago, my parents came to Japan for the holiday and we did some traveling around the Osaka/Kyoto area as well as a few places in Kyushu.

Here are some more photos of our trip.

Mom and Pop Carmin asleep on the Narushio Ferry heading to Ojika island.

Mom and Pop Carmin listening to a presentation of Ojika by one of my second-year students. My parents were invited to participate in lessons one day at the high school. They were the center of attention.

Here's Dad entertaining Mr. Kawabe (a fellow English teacher and my supervisor) and some of the ladies sitting across from him with tales of bears and rattle snakes in Colorado. We ate dinner at the yaki nikku (grilled meat) place on Ojika two nights in a row. The first night we had dinner with three of my young friends on the island. The second night, teachers from the high school joined us.

Here's mom at the roykan (traditional Japanese Inn) in Takeo. We had a catered dinner in our room, but before we dined we hit the onsen (hot mineral springs bath).

Tucked in -- Japanese style.

Shopping near Glover Gardens in Nagasaki City, Mom and Pop Carmin found a friend. This shop owner's English was pretty good and told us about how 30 years ago he hitch-hiked from New York to San Francisco. Pop Carmin got to tell him about how he came to Japan 40 years ago.

More shopping. We're posing in front of a "tori" honoring Nagasaki City's sweet pastry -- The Castella Cake. When I asked my friend what it was, she replied simply, "It's a joke.

Mom and Pop Carmin in front of the shopping street in Daizaifu.

At Canal City in Fukuoka. We caught a movie and ate sushi on their last night in town.

At the conveyor-belt sushi restaurant in Canal City. If there's one dining experience you can't miss in Japan, it's eating raw fish off of a belt that carries it around the entire restaurant.

Here they are posing in front of the airplane that carried them back to the US.

They enjoyed their time so much that there was talk of a possible second trip to Japan. I think that once anyone visits Japan, they'll be inclined to come back.

Next visitors: Jodi and KC. Two months and counting!