Golden Week

In Japan, we have Golden Week, which is just a series of public holidays. I decided to go visit my host parents out in Yamanashi Prefecture and took these photos while I was there.

-----[left] Mt. Fuji with a halo (probably means that its about to go boom)-------

----[right] The markets at the Ayame Festival with Mt Fuji in the background (still no boom)------

A friend of mine suggested that we go to the Ayame Festival to see people shoot stuff. And not only did they shoot stuff, but they shot stuff while riding horses (see left, below). It was all exciting because there were a bunch of kids sitting right near the targets, and I was waiting eagerly for the guy to sneeze just as he let loose the arrow and skewer one of them, but unfortunately, the arrow had a protector thingy on the pointy bit, so no shishkabob kids...

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It's not unusual to see a bunch of Japanese middle-age guys taking photos of up-and-coming aidoru (models) - the one below is the PG-rated version of what the kind of photos they usually take.

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Finally, here are some photos from my host parents house. My host dad is a Buddhist Priest, and we have a whopping big-arse temple hanging off the side of it (see below, right). Just behind it is a graveyard (of sorts). It was always fun living there - in the middle of the night, there was a three-legged, blind cat that always used to cry like it was getting strangled, and the owls would hoot in the background, I look out the window and all these tombstones are staring back at me. It was like something out of a horror movie... Lots of fun, though.