Culture Day / Tokyo Weekend

November 3rd was a national holiday in Japan called Culture Day. This day is used to celebrate Japanese culture and encourage cultural activities. On this day, the Emperor takes the opportunity to award individuals the Order of Culture. Those who receive this award have been deemed to have made a significant contribution to Japan's art, literature or culture. The awardees also receive an annuity for life - perhaps the reason why most of the awardees seem to be in their 70s.

We decided to use the extra holiday as an excuse to visit Tokyo for a long weekend. We travelled down on Thursday night and returned to Shimogo on Sunday afternoon. The drive down to Tokyo only took about 4 hours but the return journey to Shimogo took us 6 hours as the roads were very busy with tourists viewing the autumn colours. I'll try and get some autumn photographs on the blog before it's too late.

The most important aspect of my trip to Tokyo was my planned visit to an area called Ochanomizu. This is an area which has an abundance of ski shops and musical instrument shops. I planned to buy a new ski helmet as the one I am currently borrowing is slightly small for me.

In the end I decided on a Giro helmet, although I had originally decided to buy a Boeri. The Giro helmet that I bought is technically a snowboarding helmet, but I chose that one anyway because it fitted the best and was the most comfortable. It also seems to be fairly light compared to some of the other helmets that I tried on. I'm fairly pleased with it but have just realised that I need to buy new skiing goggles as my old set have been crushed and are seriously out of shape.

I'm back at work tomorrow and have to wait until November the 23rd for the next national holiday. Tomorrow will be an easy start to the week with only one class to attend. I'll try and post a couple of autumnal photos in the near future. Cheers.