tokuon

Golden Week

I have decided that Golden Week is
the best time of the year to travel in Japan. The weather is perfect
unless it rains, but it doesn’t rain too much at this time of the year.
The temperature is not too hot, but not cold either. Japan’s famous
cherry blossoms and plum blossoms have bloomed and fallen away, but the
late spring and early summer blossoms have begun to come out in their
full splendor.

In Atami there is the Akao Rose and Herb Garden that
cascades down a mountainside. A bus takes you to the top where you are
confronted by a true mountain view of the city and ocean. As you make
your way down the mountainside, the path takes you through a variety of
gardens blooming with flowers of all kinds. The roses, unfortunately,
were not in bloom when I was there, but the rose ice cream made up for
it. That sweet tooth of mine was unstoppable.

Uji, where I spent
a year living with the Tanaka’s, was my next stop during this Golden
Week (which is not over mind you). The Tanaka’s took me to Sagano where
we visited the Nembutsu Temple with their thousands of O-Jizou statues.
A quaint little side trip from Kyoto, the Sagano area is a peaceful
community that still maintains its rural lifestyle inspite of being a
destination for tourists. Rent a bike from Arashiyama if you have the
fortune to be in the area.

The city of Uji itself is much more
of a tourist trap than Sagano. However, you won’t find tacky Japanese
souvenirs here. As a destination for Japanese tourists, its fame is
preserved for eternity between the pages of the world’s oldest novel,
the Tale of Genji. The villa turned temple, Byodoin, is featured on the
back of the 10 yen coin and the 2000 yen bill, and when I visited, I
discovered that they had just finished building a small museum to
display the history and art of this National Treasure. Uji tea, green
tea ice cream, green tea soba, green tea everything is what to eat in
Uji. Buy a cone of green tea ice cream and head for the river for a
relaxing and romantic stroll through an older, more simple Japan.