According to our usual custom we didn\u2019t travel during Golden Week, and spent some slow time at home and nearby instead. This year my holiday was a little longer than Kuniko\u2019s – by taking two judicious holidays I could extend my days off to twelve in a row – something that most Japanese may find hard to pull off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was great to be \u201cfat with time\u201d – as a writer I enjoy once said. Projects could be pulled off the back burners, books long tucked away could be taken outside and read in the sun. Side projects could become main projects (for a little while).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The big events were social ones – meeting with Yoshi and Mamiko just before, Chiemi and Takuma during and meeting with Neil Meyer and a plan to meet Alyssa at the end of the holiday (which ultimately fell through). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We cooked and ate well, as you might expect. I cooked Callos \u00e0 la Madrile\u00f1a for the first time – killing off the beef tendon by simmering in a slow cooker for 10 hours, and then making a stew with chickpeas and smoked paprika. It turned out much better than I would have expected. I made a big batch of Bolognese sauce for our dinner with Takuma and Chiemi, and a porchetta that was excellent (although a little crispy on the outside). But just daily meals were a little special – grilling in the great weather and snatching our favorites from restaurants when we happened to walk by hungry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I saw an eye-opening documentary (Song Sung Blue), went back and watched some episodes of The Expanse, tried out a couple of dramas (For All Mankind, From), installed Navidrome and kissed Plex goodbye, and jumped through hoops to get Oblivion running on my Steamdeck. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the highlights were spending slow quiet time with Kuniko sitting outside in the beautiful weather, sipping bubbles and doing nothing more than think about what we might want to eat later. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lots of people travel during Golden Week but we learned long ago that it is nice to sit this week out. Traveling during Golden Week is like going to the Irish pub on St. Patrick\u2019s Day – you can get a better experience if you time shift it a little bit. This year should be a big travel year for us, but not quite yet. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
According to our usual custom we didn\u2019t travel during Golden Week, and spent some slow time at home and nearby instead. This year my holiday was a little longer than Kuniko\u2019s – by taking two judicious holidays I could extend my days off to twelve in a row – something that most Japanese may find […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Golden Week 2026","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pOpl7-10R","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3897\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}