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Happy birthday to me
Happy birthday to me
Happy birthday dear Mike
Happy birthday to me!

Now that that's over I can get back with my golden week adventure.

May 5th is childrens day, the girls get the doll displays in Feb. and the boys get the Armor display. There were two displays up in our hotel, I assume this indicates they had 2 boys. From our hotel we drove on up the mountain heading for Umegashima onsen. On the way there we stoped to see one of the 3 famous mountain land slides in Japan. I took a picture but needless to say I wasn't that impressed so you won't be seeing that picture on here.
We stoped at the city run bath facility in the area, it was really nice and the water was so soft and felt great. I could have stayed in for hours if felt so good.

Above is the city run bath, koganenoyu and to the side here a very small picture of the out door bath. It was a real nice facility and these pictures taken from the Jaran travel sight don't do it justice. It was obviously frequented by the locals I assumed from the number of older men there.




Our next stop took us back to Shizuoka and to a small temple that was 500 years old and along the Tokaido. I didn't really understand everything, but Shige is a distant relative of someone connected to this shrine. The lady on duty there knew the connection and served us tea and dango and gave us a short tour of the temple. It's gardens are famous for moon viewing.

Back in Shizuoka we had lunch at a restaurant called "Saigon". It was very nice and seemed to be popular with young women. Stomachs filled we caught the Shinkansen to Hamamatsu. During golden week there is a famous kite flying festival. We actually didn't get there in time to see the kites, but they also have these huge carts that our pulled through the streets proceded by hordes of people carying laterns, blowing on trumpets, and beating drums. Something like the march around Jerico must have been like.



It started with a parade of marching bands. I guess one reason for this is the headquarters for Yamaha is in Hamamatsu. After that the men carrying flags came.

These guys were followed by drummers.

And they were followed by buglers, and lantern carriers.

These groups all came streaming by and getting more intense as they came, then they would circle back and meet other oncoming groups, it was very interesting. And this was only the begining.

Next came the floats.

These also were coming and going from 3 directions I don't know how many there were and actually we left before it was all over so we could get something to eat and avoid the inevitable stampede back to the station.



The evening ended with a light dinner at the stalls in a court yard of a building near the station. The interesting thing was that most of the booths were ran by foreigners. So I had Turkish and Iranian pita sandwhiches, and Shige had a pita and Indian curry and fresh baked nan. By the time we got back to the Inn that we had booked we were exhausted and sore from standing. So we stopped and got a nice 60 min. massage, a nice ending to a long day.