It’s Golden Week here in Japan. Golden week is crammed full of four
different Japanese Holidays:
Showa no hi, April 29 - is the birthday of former Emperor Showa
Kenpo kinenbi (Constitution Day)
– May 3rd, is the day in 1947, the new postwar
constitution was put into effect.
Greenery Day (Midori no hi) – May 4th, is dedicated to the environment and nature, because the Emperor Showa loved plants and nature.
Children's Day (Kodomo no hi) – May 5th,
The Boy's Festival (Tango no Sekku) is celebrated on this day. Families pray
for the health and future success of their sons by hanging up carp streamers
and displaying samurai dolls, both symbolizing strength, power and success in
life. Sorry, we already missed The Girl's Festival on March 3.
I’ve been reading about it and it’s quite interesting, but what it
really boils down to, is Derek gets a five day weekend. Yay!! In fact, most
Japanese take the entire week off and parks and touristy places are filled to
capacity with merry makers. The Japanese work incredibly hard, but it appears
that they play even harder!
So how does a great husband kick off the Golden Week festivities
with his ADHD wife who likes shiny things? He takes her to the shiniest place
in town, The Tokyo Tower!
The Tower was built in 1958 because Tokyo needed an antennae
tower. The design is reminiscent of the Eiffel tower and is 13 meters taller,
making it the tallest antennae tower in the world, which I’m quite certain is a
sore point for the French. Smart marketing has turned it into a great tourist
attraction, offering a spectacular 360° view of the city.
Okay, I’ve done my due diligence as a tour guide. On to more interesting
topics. The tower is a mere 1.1 miles from our apartment so, because I wanted
to get pictures of it at night, we walked there. Derek is just that kind of a
guy!
A really great date night includes inadvertently stumbling across
a live action Mario Cart race through the streets of Tokyo!
Grown men and women dressed in Mario style costumes zipped through
the streets. Just when you thought they were all gone another batch would come
racing through the city that loves video games.
The tower is visible from many points in the city. You can even
see it from our apartment compound, but it’s not until you get up close and
personal that you see how impressive it really is.
This week the tower gleams
solid Gold in honor of Golden Week. A ceiling of carp streamers stretches away
from the tower in a thick canopy in honor of Children’s Day.
Inside the tower is an array of shops and restaurants and more
importantly, elevators! Elevators that shoot up through the center of the
tower. On a great date night, you step into an elevator and are whisked up to
the 150m high observation deck. There, you discover just how massive Tokyo
really is! High rise buildings meander all the way to the edges of the horizon;
a jeweled landscape of impressive magnitude!
Here’s where the date gets dodgy as I completely abandon my
husband in a photographic adrenalin rush, but he just smiles and looks on
because he loves me. Shooting through smeary, thick glass windows is no small
feat, but I took up the gauntlet.
Little did we know that on this ONE day only, they happened to be
celebrating the 30th Anniversary of the epically popular Final
Fantasy video game, complete with a sneak preview of the game playing across
the top two rows of windows (thankfully NOT obscuring our view of the city).
After getting our fill of the breathtaking view of Tokyo, we took
the elevator back down and wandered the multitude of shops, mostly dedicated to
anime that I didn’t recognize. Okay, I don’t recognize any anime but it was
still fun.
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| There is a drinks machine every thirty feet in Tokyo! I suspect we will never die of thirst here! |
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| If you look to the right of the doors, there is a sort of computer where you order and pay for your food. Then you go inside and collect it. |
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| A Ferrari Vending maching!;-) |
We finished off the date with a delicious crepe from a shop at the
base of the tower and then had a lovely walk back home. Even the walk was beautiful and we stumbled upon all sorts of interesting areas.
I think I could get
used to Japan being our home.
And THAT…is how you do date night in Tokyo.
