That's gold Jerry, gold!

Coming up in May is Golden Week, when Japan takes a collective break after the hectic fiscal year change-over period. Then, all at once, the Japanese people take to the trains, highways and airplanes.

Golden Week is not really a week off. And this year, it's just a four-day weekend, because one of the national holidays involved falls on a Saturday, which gets no make-up during the week because it's not technically a day off here (they used to go to school six days a week here, as we often heard about when the test score gap came up).

So we'll get a four-day weekend beginning Saturday, May 3. I haven't formed any big plans yet, which seems to be a theme for me and days off. I really would like to see some other areas of Japan. A visit to Hiroshima would be interesting. A trip to the northern island of Hokkaido, featuring Portland's sister city Sapporo, would be fun. Or I could pick an old standard like Kyoto, or try to see friends in Tokyo, or, failing to plan anything, I could wait around and hope the Ise crowd decides to do something.

It might actually be smarter to avoid major traveling during the Golden Four-day Weekend, since transport lines and hotels and things will probably be busy or booked. I can always save my own traveling for a less popular period, in the summer, when I can use paid holidays and take off when most people are still working.

For the record, in case you're interested, the holidays of Golden Week are the following:

Saturday, May 3 -- Constitution Memorial Day
Sunday, May 4 -- Green Day
Monday, May 5 -- Children's Day
Tuesday, May 6 -- Substitute holiday (because Children's Day falls on a Sunday

Originally I was imagining a six-day weekend for some lucky years, but it seems the most you can get out of Golden Week is a five-day weekend ... looking ahead at calendars for the next couple years, the dates of the holidays change, perhaps to avoid the six-day weekend I was imagining. Not sure.