The trip to my parent’s house – Part.1

In Japan, there is a long national holiday in May, which we call, “Golden Week“.

Generally it starts on May 3, Constitution day, and ends on May 5, Children’s day.

Especially this year, Golden Week was longer than usual because of the weekend.

My husband and I went back to my parent’s house, which is located 1 hour by plane from Tokyo.

In Golden Week, it’s difficult to buy discounted tickets.

In this season, many people travel by planes, therefore the airlines don’t discount tickets.

I was not able to get a good flight time(morning and afternoon), because other people had already booked them, so we went back to Tokushima prefecture(my hometown) ,at a somewhat late time.

I was very happy to see my parent’s, because it was last October when I went there last.

The next day, my father, my husband and I went to Kochi prefecture, which is next to Tokushima prefecture.

It was very far from my parent’s house our destination in Kochi.

My father drove for about 4 hours through the mountains, and by the time we reached our destination, we were all tired tired.

At first, we went to Kochi castle, which was the setting for a famous TV program in Japan.

There, we ate local ice cream which is called “Ice Crin”, the Japanese old name of ice cream.

I really like this ice cream!

The shop’s staff said to me, it was free to add other flavors during Golden Week. We were lucky!

After Kochi castle, we moved to a big and famous market in Kochi, which is called ‘Nichiyo-Ichi (Sunday Market)‘.

I remember this market, from my childhood, as I once went there with my parents.

By chance, I could get a free paper at the market. According to an article, there are more than 500 shops there!

It was very very crowded, because of Golden Week!

Vegetables, fishes, pickles, knives, flowers, etc are sold at many similar style of small shops!

The prices of them are not too bad, so we just enjoyed the peculiar atmosphere of the market, and bought small dried fish and one kind of miso which was packaged in a small container, for our breakfast when we returned to Tokyo.(Actually they were very tasty! So now I regret that I didn’t buy more!)

After passing through the market, we looked for restaurants for our lunch.

But there were not so many restaurants around us, even though there were many small shops!

I didn’t want to enter a usual restaurant.  To eat delicious local food is very important for me and my husband.

So we bought some fish cakes, tempura and grilled bonito which is called ‘Katsuo no tataki‘ at another market, and ate them in my father’s car.

I think it was a nice idea, hahaha.

We left Kochi at about 3p.m. and reached my parent’s house about 4 hours later.

All of us were very tired, but we really enjoyed the trip to Kochi. And I was able to talk with my father in his car after a  long time.

Oh! I have another thing that I want to write about.

On our way home, we stopped at a parking area in Tokushima, where I saw a wonderful sight!

There were many carp banners, which are called ‘Koinobori‘ over the river.

On Children’s day, we cerebrate the growth of children by decorating carp banners above our house.

In Some rural areas, the Koinobori are decorated over rivers, or between mountains.

To be continued!