Golden Week

Hello everyone!

My apologies that its been so long. life's been a bit hectic as of late. Thanks again to all of you that have been thinking of and praying for myself and my family. Life just refuses to slow down...

Golden week takes place during the first week of May. Its a national holiday in Japan and employees at Sun Medical (as well as most workers in Japan) had a number of days off of work. We had Monday, Thursday and Friday off.

On Monday, I went to FujiQ Highland Park with 4 coworkers. It was pretty incredible to see Mount Fuji up close and to ride some ridiculous roller coasters. One of the roller coasters accelerated from 0 to 172 km (100+ mph) in 3 seconds... We also rode what used to be the world's tallest rollercoaster (its still in the top 5 and at 259 ft. I would say its a pretty sweet ride). The amusement park visit included a brief climb up a small hill in the park that was nicknamed "mt. fuji." It offered a nice view of the park and of Mount Fuji.

That evening we attempted to see Mt. Fuji from a nearby park (nature park) but it was already closed as the sun was beginning to set. We stopped at a restaurant on the way home and I had delicious Japanese style steak. It was actually pretty similar to Western style steak with a distinct absence of A1 sauce... (The steak was cooked with similar spices including a lot of ground pepper.) It was delicious. Naturally I was pretty exhausted by the time we arrived back in Suwa.

On Thursday, I visited Nagano City, towards the north end of Nagano prefecture with another coworker. As many of you probabaly recall, the winter olympics were held in Nagano City in 1998. We visited the M-wave building, the site of the speed skating events, and home to a museum of olympic memorabilia.

After grabbing some lunch, we hit the main attraction: sen koji (I'm not certain of the spelling, its pronounced 'shen koh - jeeh') Its a very famous buddhist temple. It was very interesting to hear descriptions of what the different structures/statues/items meant and were used for by the temple. Ugawad-san gave a good tour...and made for some good conversations. The buildings were very beatiful, but I enjoyed the Japanese style gardens and park adjacent to the temple even more. We spent a bit of time walking around the park - examining the trees, flowers, ponds, stream, and such... I recommend checking out the pictures if you're curious to see what it was like.

We checked out some of the local shops and found some pretty neat things. Ugawad-san wanted to make a special trip to Starbucks (there happened to be one in the city...he spent some time in Texas during his studies and has a friend that is crazy about Starbucks) So we walked along the main strip of shops and made our way to the Starbucks and a bookstore. The way was full of flower displays that were specially crafted for Golden week. There were also a live mariachi band and a jazz trio that we bumped into at different points during the evening, performing live music. As it began to get dark, we made our way back to the car and set out to return to Suwa. Ugawad-san felt a little bit nervous about navigating (as it had been about 5 years since he'd last been to Nagano city. But he managed just fine and we were soon on the main highway headed back to Suwa...

For the rest of Golden Week, I relazed, slept in, and checked out the sights in Suwa itself, including the nearby Lake Suwako.

Well, I must be done for now. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend! I'll try to write again soon.

God bless,

Jonathan