Evening and welcome to Week 47 – a week of rain…for the most part. The grey skies did not clear up for the whole week. This was largely due to a very large typhoon (number 21, if you are interested), which started to our south and slowly moved north over the week. On the day it actually landed, we received around 120ml. Again the typhoon landed in the Osaka/Wakayama area and the rain was heaviest there. We got some wind here as well, but nothing like they experienced.

The day after we had to go out to do some shopping, despite the ongoing but somewhat lighter rain. I thought it would be interesting to go and have a look at the Kamogawa, so that we could see how high the river level was, and I also wanted to check the progress of the autumnal colour change. The Kamo was as high as I have ever seen it, so much so that the concrete x-shaped forms which are generally used for breakwater construction at the beach but which are in the Kamo just south of the Gojo street bridge and which are normally mostly exposed, were completely underwater.

These were fully submerged after the rain

Strewn around the roadsides and next to the river were quite a few ‘dead’ umbrellas. A sad sight, the poor broken and abandoned plastic umbrellas, dumped after the wind has caught them and tragically inverted them. Umbrellas are very cheap here and therefore are completely disposable. This is also exacerbated by the fact that there are no rubbish bins on streets and households do not have a rubbish bin in which to put their refuse – rubbish is disposed of by using pre-paid garbage bags (bought in convenience stores and supermarkets) and these aren’t overly large, so it is hard to get rid of larger items like umbrellas.

In relation to the aforementioned autumnal colour, it is just beginning to happen, but very slowly. We are on constant alert to spy the odd tree that has begun the process so we can capture the colour for posterity and for this blog (and Facebook and Instagram – it’s all about the marketing). Anticipation.

The lone tree

Now, turning to The Very Nearly House (yes, another name change) all windows and doors are now installed, except the front door, so until that happens it is not fully a house in my terms. The outside is now fully clad and awaiting the final coating and it appears that all the electrical wiring and plumbing is installed. The next steps will involve installing ceilings and flooring, I presume, me being a novice at house building and the order in which things are done.

One other outing we had was to look for suitable things to photograph in black and white – Craig had been given a seven day challenge by a friend to post one black and white photo each day, that didn’t include any people – difficult in Japan! We started on Kiyamachi street and then walked back and across to the railway station, with stops at the Honganji temple and ending up at One of my favourite stores – Yodobashi.

Along the way we took the backstreets as much as possible, because you never know what you may find, and discovered a HUGE bottle shop (!!!!!!!) and a temple which was originally built in the 1100s by Emperor Go-Shirakawa. This temple has had a history of destruction by fire, as so many have, and has been moved once by Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Unfortunately it is only open one day per year, on 13 April.

After finding these two gems, we went on to Honganji, a huge temple near the Kyoto station, which we have visited a few times since we started visiting Japan in 2007. For the first time since 2007 there is no renovation happening at the temple, so all buildings and gates are uncovered and fully visible. It really is very impressive and is one of the first places of historical interest that you see when you leave the station.

Well, that’s all we managed in this very wet week – we couldn’t even dry our washing, there was so much moisture in the air!

 !!!!!!

Cheers and here’s to sunny days.