Cold, cold, cold…It feels like winter is here, early, with the daytime temperatures now in the mid to low teens and the overnight temperatures under 10C. It is certainly colder now than it was when I arrived last year and when we were here the year before at this time. I am now wearing my puffy vest more often than not during the day, and my big puffy jacket if we go out after dark – which, by the way, is from about 5:30.

Luckily, we are getting the odd sunny days, which are much more pleasant and make for better photographs to highlight the colours. I am certainly looking forward to moving into our new house with the under floor heating in our living area! At least I have my room shoes here, which are warm and comfortable 😊.

Talking about The Very Nearly House, the outside cladding has now had the coating applied and so is looking even more like a home. When we went to look at it, it was just finished, with the tradie cleaning his tools and equipment. There were also some men there painting the barge-boards. Inside it seems the focus is mainly upladder, with some of the wooden flooring having been laid in the entrances to each of the rooms, and the door frames now in place. Door frames have also been installed on the bottom floor.

This week, in our pursuit of autumnal colour, we visited Tofukuji. Unfortunately the gorgeous rock garden that I had enjoyed so much last time I visited was closed, however, this time with Craig here, we visited the other gardens in the complex that I didn’t go into previously, many of which were rock gardens.

The main area was absolutely spectacular, despite it being partly overcast. As suspected, there were many people there, but it was still lovely and nowhere near as crowded as the other ‘main’ attractions around Kyoto. For my money (and it did cost to enter each of the three garden areas so was a bit pricey, but I imagine the upkeep there must be significant) Tofukuji is a better place to visit than some of the other, more popular sites.

The other two garden areas in Tofukuji included both rock gardens and ‘green’ gardens, a few of which had the checkerboard theme that was in the rock garden in the first main area. A feast for the eyes, on top of which the added colours of autumn was the proverbial icing on the cake. Definitely worth the money and a place I would visit any time of the year.

The other ‘big’ outing we had this week was to the Toyota dealer that we had been to a couple of months ago. They had told us it would take at least a month to deliver a car, once it was ordered, and we thought it would probably take a couple of weeks before a decision was made about us getting a loan, so if we wanted a car in early January we had to carpe diem and give it a go.

We were concerned that we wouldn’t get a loan for the company, given we haven’t started trading and, as of now, have no assets in the company name. As a result, and given how bureaucratic transactions of this nature can be here, we took everything we could think of they might want for both the company and ourselves, as individuals, so that if the loan was denied for the company, as a fall-back position, we could apply in our own names. We figured we could complete applications for both, with our preference being the company first.

Our appointment was at 3:00pm on Sunday and we spent the first part looking through another Sienta and getting a feel for it, sitting in it, etc. They seemed to be very concerned that we really did want to have the Sienta and wouldn’t regret the purchase. Then we went inside and went through all the options and costs, etc again, to make sure we were happy with that too – we did change the colour we had chosen, having looked at numerous Sientas during the interim and deciding we preferred the silver. Important decisions!

(A model version – ours has black trim, not blue)

After that I then had to fill out many, many forms, in Japanese. By the end my hand was nearly cramping – I’m not very good at writing at the best of times but the added complication of writing kanji and making it legible is very hard for me. After numerous applications of our company hanko (stamp), they went off to talk to the finance company to make sure they had everything they needed. It turns out the finance company is a Toyota subsidiary, so around 40 minutes later, they came back and said it had been approved!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Just like that! All that worry…

This, of course, then meant I had to fill out even more forms to officially order our new car. None-the-less, I survived the whole form ordeal and in the first week of January we will pick up our new car. It certainly has been a period of firsts for us, this last nearly twelve months. First time to live overseas, first time to sell a house (not without issues, of course), first time to build a house (well, not ourselves) and now first time buying a brand new car.

One other thing they offered us, while we were there and had been approved for a loan, was a credit card for our company. This, too, we had thought we wouldn’t be able to get. It is very hard to get either a loan or a credit card in Japan, as a foreigner, and we managed it all in one afternoon. So, we walked out of the Toyota dealer at 7:30pm having bought a car and been approved for a credit card. Along with that, as we were leaving, the salesman asked us to wait while he went to get us a souvenir. After a while, he came back with two 12-packs of toilet paper and two 5-packs of tissues!!!! Apparently they had run out of the usual souvenirs they give customers. Eminently practical, as far as gift giving goes!

So, more milestones ticked off, with more to go – next on the list are Japanese driver’s licences and finding someone to employ as our Food Hygiene Sanitation Manager, because the person in charge of our area in the relevant department said she would only deal with a person fluent in Japanese…

On a final note, we had a lovely dinner out last night with a daughter of a friend and her partner. Always nice to catch up with people we know.

Cheers for now

Hi all and welcome to my week in Kyoto, it being number 49 and fast heading towards the twelve month mark! It seems amazing to me that I have been here so long. This time last year I was making all the final preparations before leaving, such as notifying the relevant organisations that I would be departing in the near future, trying to determine what to bring with me, particularly clothing, and how to fit everything into the cases. I was also trying to catch up with as many people as possible before D day.

So, what has happened here this week? Firstly, the weather has been much better, although remaining cool. Secondly, the much anticipated autumnal colour change is moving on and looking good. The Ginko trees have only just started turning yellow, which with the reds and oranges is what makes the autumn here so wonderful.

Turning to The Very Nearly House, visible progress is much less obvious now, although there have been a few changes which do make a difference. The bathrooms have all been installed upstairs (no stairs yet…should it be upladder??) and they look bigger than I thought they would. The good news is that we have been able to have Toto washlets (toilets) installed, which is a bonus for our future guests. The other very obvious change is the opening up of the atrium to reveal the full height of the entrance area. I only hope the light bulbs never need changing…

 The atrium

 ‘upladder’

Now that the colour has started, it was time to take Craig to a couple of places he hadn’t been to – Kodaiji and Tofukuji. This week I decided that we should visit Kodaiji, in part because I suspected that Tofukuji will be even more spectacular the more colour that is out. So, we picked the day we thought would be best in terms of sunlight and set off to one of the areas in Kyoto that is nearly always wall to wall people.

…and so it was, however, Kodaiji itself wasn’t very crowded at all, which was a huge relief. The interesting thing about the visit this time is that there were some rooms/parts of buildings that were open that weren’t when I went there earlier this year, which was fantastic. The other thing, of course, was the added beauty of the autumn colours, along with the fact that it wasn’t very hot and humid.

After we left there we went on to visit Maruyama Park, since it is fairly close to Kodaiji and also a lovely place to visit. We actually climbed further up the hill than we had been before, which was very nice and, surprisingly, found another temple! Following this, we went back down through the park and into Yasaka jinja. When we got there, there was a large crowd gathering, police directing where people could stand and tv cameras – so I just had to find out who or what was about to happen. We found a spot where we could see through the crowd and then a man came along and encouraged the crowd to make a lot of noise and take photos!!!! Most strange – it is usually the opposite when something happens at a temple or shrine. It turned out that some very famous Kabuki actors were visiting the shrine, although I’m not sure exactly what they were doing there.

Last post I mentioned I thought that with the end Halloween all the xmas decorations would go up – I was wrong. The end of that week , as it turned out, was Culture Day (a public holiday) and the decorations in place for that were mostly Japanese flags. As it happened, this caused us some issues because we had gone up to the Legal Affairs Bureau to get an updated copy of our company registration certificate (over 3kms from our flat) and it was closed. We must remember to check the calendar more often!!!! It’s the second time we have been caught out.

On the way back home, we noticed there were some xmas decorations in shops, but not out in the streets. So, we have for your enjoyment a photo of xmas Snoopy, as a foretaste for more to come 😊.

Well, that’s it for this week – hopefully the weather will continue to be kind so we can get out and find more of that glorious autumn colour (am I being repetitive???). More to come…

Cheers

Another week, another typhoon… Yes, we had number 22 pass through this week, with the associated greyness and rain. On the up side, we actually had some sunshine this week too!!! It was very, very nice to be able to go outside without an umbrella, and in some lighter clothes. So, welcome to week 48, sometimes sunny, sometimes rainy.

I have to say that typhoon 22 wasn’t as full-on as number 21, but then it didn’t actually make full landfall but rather passed to the southeast, giving us mainly the rain shadow. The question is:– was it the last for the season??? Only time will tell, of course, but it is nice having the current respite and consequential sunny days.

The sunny weather has also made it easier to visit The Very Nearly House to see what they are up to. Last time I said it appeared the electrical wiring and plumbing was fully installed. I think I also said I was a novice at building, and so it was no surprise to arrive and find eight vehicles at the site, with nearly all occupants beavering away at electrical and plumbing stuff (stuff – technical jargon). Some were installing the bathrooms upstairs, others downstairs installing the electrical distribution board and associated peripheries and some outside installing a satellite dish (!!!!), which we didn’t know we were getting.

There was also a couple of tradies (not sure what they would actually be called here – I’m not even sure exactly what their training system is here) finishing the woodwork under the eaves (the soffit?). The external cladding is still naked; I presume there are still things that have to be done outside before the final surfacing is done – but don’t quote me on this…

With the improving weather, we decided to try to find some of that elusive autumnal colour. Our thinking was that the mountain areas were likely to be further down the track in terms of autumn colour because it is cooler in the mountain areas than down here in the city, generally. So, we decided to head up to Kuramadera since it is reasonably easily accessible and it is a pleasant place to visit. Craig was keen to try the climb from the Kibune side again, to see if our fitness and strength had improved, however, one of my knees has been playing up a bit recently (so many stairs…), so I suggested we climb up from the Kurama side and, if my knee is ok, go over the top of the mountain and down to Kibune.

It was a glorious autumn day, sunny and low 20s, so perfect climbing weather. When we arrived at the entrance to Kuramadera, down the bottom of the walk/climb, we found a notice in English explaining that it was not possible to climb the trail over to Kibune as some trees had fallen across the path! Thank goodness for my knee being difficult, otherwise we would have got off the train at the Kibune station and walked the approximately 2kms to the start of the trail up to Kuramadera, only to find it was closed.

So we didn’t get a chance to try the climb again and, as it turned out, my knee behaved itself during the climb up to the temple and back. Unfortunately, the elusive autumnal colour remained somewhat elusive, as it really hadn’t begun in earnest up at Kuramayama. Anyway, it was a nice walk/climb and I did notice that it was much easier than last time, so my fitness is definitely improving.

After the foreshortened expedition we decided to walk up the main road of the township there, as we had never done so, to see where the famed Kurama onsen was. It is a lovely town surrounded as it is by the mountains, with most of the houses lining the road being old and very traditional. A scenic place to live, but I imagine it gets very cold in winter and Craig said he would be concerned about the possibility to landslides there. The risk of landslide here has really been highlighted to us during the last two typhoons when many landslides occurred, burying roads and houses and leaving some houses hanging over the edge of a newly created cliff.

One other outing we had was to the office of the Japan Automobile Federation to have our licences translated so that we can apply for Japanese licences. They said it would take around a week to do and they would post the finished product to us, which they did (in less than a week). We also need to prove that we had our licences for at least three months while we were in Australia, but unfortunately our licences don’t have the issue date on them, nor how long we have had them, so we have sent an email to the SA transport department asking for a statement of how long we have had them – no response yet…

So, time and the weather move on. Halloween has now passed and, though we haven’t looked yet, I would bet that the xmas decorations are already up in the shops – more on that next time (will there be upside-down trees this time??).

In parting, here’s a photo of the witch watching tv on Halloween and a photo of someone who looks like a Japanese Chopper Reid…well, we think he does anyway! Cheers.

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.

My how the weather can change! Suddenly we’re wearing long sleeves and jackets and enclosed shoes – and we have had to resort to using quilts at night!! How long before the aircons are on to heat our little abode?

Hello, and welcome to week 46, which I am writing while clad in a fluffy hoodie and fleecy lined track pants – the height of elegance it is not, but it is assuredly warm and comfortable. It has been a bit of a shock going from short sleeves and sandals to rugging up in such a short space of time. I have even turned the toilet seat heating on, though only to 1. There have also been quite a few wet days, which makes you feel less inclined to go out lest you get wet and cold. You certainly experience the seasons here, and there are definitely more than four. We await the autumn colour with anticipation!

So, to the week’s activities. We went up to visit The Nearly House on Saturday this week, as we had an engagement on Sunday (more about that later). I suspected we’d find tradies busy at work on our future home, and so it was. The main focus of the work was the outside cladding of the building, which looked like they had just commenced it that day. Given the rate they are getting through the work, I imagine the house will be fully clad when we go up there next weekend. This will indeed make it The House in my mind!! Inside it appeared much of the plumbing was in place along with the electrical wiring.

This week we also received a selection of designs for a circular metal decoration to be attached to the front of our house from our architect. There was one that when we saw it we both just had to have it – again he has understood what we are looking for. I specifically asked for a round element on the front of the building because it is quite angular with square windows, etc. Also, I had noticed that quite a few traditional Japanese houses had a round window or metal decoration on the front. I actually asked for a round window, but the architect said it would be costly to add that into a two storey façade, in terms of engineering and the strength of the wall.

On Sunday, we went to see the Autumn tour sumo event in Kyoto. I was really looking forward to this and was hoping all of the yokozuna would be there, because during the last sumo basho three of the four yokozuna had not been able to participate due to injury, including Hakuho.

It took a train and a bus to get us to the Kyoto Prefectural Gymnasium where it was being held, and it was a rainy day, but we got there relatively dry and looking forward to the day’s programme. We had booked a box which was for two people and I thought it was going to be an actual box, except we would be sitting on the cushions on the floor. I took a cushion, just in case the seating wasn’t overly comfortable. We also took our own food because I was pretty sure there wouldn’t be any vegetarian food available at the venue.

Turns out the “boxes” were rectangles marked out with tape on the floor of the gymnasium, and there were no cushions (thank goodness I took my own – poor Craig had to sit on the floor for the whole programme). While the ring is raised above ground level, it was at times hard to see thanks to some people who sat up on their feet – we were four or five rows back. Also, as so often happens, there were some people who kept getting up and down during the day (doing who knows what???).

Despite all the above, it was a good day overall and all the yokozuna were there, which was fantastic. Harumafuji didn’t fight (although he did come out during the warm up), but then he won the last basho, so perhaps they were giving him some rest time!!! The day started with over an hour of warm up time, during which we got to see the sorts of training they would normally do. Hakuho did some practice with another rikishi in the ring, which was great to watch, especially as it was half serious, half fun. He was having a good time. After this, they had some children go up against some of the rikishi, which was very funny, then a bout which was entirely put on and was hilarious. Following this two rikishi had their hair done in the ring to show how it is done.

 (photo bombing geiko)

Once all that was over, all of the rikishi came out in three separate groups, based on their ranking with the last group being the four yokozuna, all in their kesho mawashi (see photo – they look somewhat like a very elaborate apron) to do the ring entry ceremony. A number of the rikishi were carrying babies (not sure whose…) and included them in the ceremony. The final part of the programme involved the rikishi in matched bouts. Very enjoyable and I got to yell out best wishes to Hakuho before his bout. Interestingly, there was a small group of Hakuho fans around me – so we really put some effort into it!!

The other activity of note this week was our second visit to the taiko group practice. We weren’t sure what was going to happen, whether we would be thrown in the deep end, or just spend time watching another practice given they have two more performances this month. The person we had talked to last time wasn’t there when we got there and the other people didn’t seem to know what we were going to be doing, so they just said we should watch.

About an hour and a half into the practice, she turned up and shortly thereafter we were suddenly asked to follow her and one of the men in the group to another room. She said we were going to have a lesson with this man! So he started playing a rhythm and got us to follow him, then he indicated he wanted us to do some improvised playing…Having not played for  months, I was somewhat rusty and after playing the rhythm for a while, which was quite fast, my arms were feeling rather shaky. Still, we both managed to play some bars. Then he started teaching us two sections of one of the songs they perform. It was very enjoyable and certainly tested my recently unused skill of learning a new taiko piece…We were told they perform around 20 times per year. Food for thought, as it is unlikely we will be able to be involved in many performances once our business starts.

On the way home, when we came up out of the subway station on the main road near our flat, we noticed a pink beam of light coming from Kiyomizudera. Was it them sending messages to the kami or bodhisattva?

Well, that’s is for now from autumnal Kyoto – hopefully I’ll be able to bring you some lovely photos of autumn colour soon. In the meantime, here’s some more Halloween photos. Cheers!

PS – Craig has had a hair cut!!

Hello and welcome to October! Ok, I know it has been October now for nearly two weeks, but it is my first October posting since I haven’t posted for two weeks. Why? (warning, excuse follows) I decided to wait till I had some rather more interesting things to talk about, along with some photos.

We didn’t do anything overly out of the normal in the first week, apart from visiting a couple of vegan restaurants and handing out some of our cards. It was nice to meet some of the people in our fellow vegan businesses and they were quite excited at the prospect of a vegan minshuku opening in Kyoto, especially at Veg Out, which is very close to where our business is going to be. A number of the staff there had visited Australia and seemed pleased we were from Australia.

The other main outing we had was to meet with our builder and architect, to start the selections process. This was slightly difficult since we didn’t have overly much in the way of samples – it is hard to chose colours from photos on a device or in a book. The architect did have large samples of the exterior cladding, which enabled us to see the colour we previously thought was ok was, in fact, slightly pink. So we changed that! Other than that, we chose the tiles for our area, the wallpaper, the door styles and wood, the bathrooms styles, etc. At the end, we arranged to go to a Panasonic showroom to chose our kitchen colours and layout. (Yes, Panasonic)

During the meeting, our builder received a phone call from his friend who runs the taiko group I previously referred to. He had apparently contacted his friend to arrange for us to visit them and his friend was ringing to confirm the time and place. We found out that they generally practice twice a week, Tuesday and Friday nights from 7-9pm. We organised to go on the Friday night. As it turns out, it was a very wet day, so it was somewhat harder to find where they were once we reached the shrine, thanks to the rain and the mud!!! Luckily someone arrived as we were wandering around, lost, and let us in. The friend we were supposed to meet didn’t arrive until after 8:00pm.

Slight hiccup aside, we went in to find a very large carpeted space, on which they had put down a large tarp and were then placing plywood sheets, which had markings on them. These turned out to be place markers for their drums and positions they would take on stage. There were four people there when we arrived and by the end there were around 20. The drums varied from shime, through to one huge ohira daiko (large with a short body). This can be put upright on a stand, or on a flat stand. When on the flat stand it can be played with the normal, but very large, drum sticks (bachi) or a single stick which looks rather like a baseball bat in shape.

We watched the whole practice, which was entirely taken up going through around five pieces and making sure that each part was as best they could make it – it turns out they have three concert performances happening during October, so are preparing for them. They were very good and the pieces were great. At least one of them we recognised as one of the pieces Kodo plays. I was trying to work out where we could fit in, if in fact they did consider us, because it really was quite slick.

At the end, two of the members talked to us to see what we thought. Our builder had told his friend we were looking for a group to join and they asked us if we were still interested, particularly in light of the fact that we have relatively limited Japanese and they spend time at the end of each class discussing how it went and any problem areas. One of the women said she was worried it would be a problem and we indicated we thought it might be difficult us joining given they have a set of pieces they play regularly and have all the parts worked out, etc. We gave them our card and they said they would contact us via email.

On Sunday, we received an email asking us if we would like to join them! We assume they had discussed this amongst themselves and decided in the end to invite us. We, of course, are very happy with this, if a little apprehensive. We will have to pick up the pieces they play very fast…

On Monday we went to the Panasonic showroom to do our selection. It is interesting the differences between what we are used to in Australia in terms of a standard home kitchen and what they have. First big difference is the sink – when I say sink, I mean they have a single, very large sink as standard (no draining board), where in Australia, we generally have a double sink, which is much smaller, and a draining board on one or both sides. Another very obvious difference is the lack of an oven. They have a cook top, which mostly has three hobs and a griller underneath, but rarely an oven. They showed us an oven when we asked, but it was quite small. It also was a microwave!!! It was also quite expensive. So, we are going to stick with the micro/oven combo we have currently – much cheaper.

Yesterday, we went on an outing to the next prefecture to Kyoto prefecture, Hyougo. Our destination there was a walking trail along a disused railway track, the Fukuchiyama line, which passes through the Mukogawa gorge. Known as the Takedao Hike, it is around 5-6kms long and has six old railway tunnels along its length. We had seen it on tv a while ago, during a segment we regularly watch where two men walk between onsens within a prefecture and show various sights along the way. I particularly wanted to go on this walk as they had seen some bats in one of the tunnels.

We had to catch three trains to get there, which took just under an hour and a half, then walk around 1km from Namaze station to the beginning of the trail, but it was worth it. The weather was a balmy 29C and sunny, so perfect for a hike/walk. At the beginning of the trail there was a laminated sign which warned of a bear sighting on the tail in June this year, but we figured it was now October, so it probably had moved on (maybe). Anyway, there were other walkers, so it was more likely that it would be scared off. It was a lovely walk, very scenic and not too hard – the rails had been removed just leaving the sleepers and stone base.

We took torches with us for the tunnels, which was absolutely necessary in all the tunnels, even the shorter ones through which you could see the other end. The longest tunnel is apparently around 450 metres, and it curves, so you cannot see the other end. It is pitch black inside. Unfortunately, the hoped for multitude of bats didn’t materialise, although we did find one sleeping in one of the refuge holes (I think that’s what they are…). Overall, it was definitely worth the effort and I would recommend it as a relatively easy and very pleasant hike/walk (having said that, we were somewhat tired at the end, which we put down to the uneven surface of the sleepers and stones).

Forgot to mention The Nearly House (an upgrade…) before. The windows are now all in and the electricals are close to being fully installed. Upstairs (up the ladder…), most of the walls are now in place. We asked the expected completion timetable at our meeting with the builder and were told they are about a month ahead of schedule!!!! We should be able to move in during January :-).

Before I sign off, just had to buy the packet of “Herbs for Halloween” pictured below. What were they you ask???? Salad leaves…

Cheers for now.

Hello and welcome to Week 43! Yes, it’s me again, bringing you the latest from the far north (north from Australia, that is). This time I have managed to find some free time at the computer earlier, so that it is only one week since my last posting!!

After the flurry of bureaucratic encounters and putting together our internet presence, it has been quite a calm week – and the weather has been lovely. The extreme humidity has definitely passed now, and even though most of the days have been in the low 30s it is quite comfortable to go outside. It is also really nice to have the windows open most of the time. The kids have also been much more lively – when they’re awake…

This week we continued trying to increase the exposure of our minshuku, through finding as many relevant websites as possible to list ourselves on and we have created a business card to hand around here. We plan to visit all the vegan and vegetarian restaurants we can and hand out these cards. Also, it is just the done thing here to swap business cards.

So, to The Frame – until all the doors are on, I can’t really call it The House. We decided to visit on Sunday, with the hope that no workers would be there so that we could go inside and climb up to the second floor (Australian translation: first floor). Until the stairs are built, the only access to the floor is via a ladder and I don’t think the workers would take it too well if we just decided to take over their ladder and get in their way (though, I’d guarantee they wouldn’t say so).

The first thing we noticed is that the front entrance area has had the final concrete pour to bring the level up to the floor level. This is the area just inside the front door where you enter with shoes and then take them off to walk around inside the rest of the house. We also have an area like that at the entrance to our area from the outside. In our area, there is what appears to be space for a shoe cupboard just inside the door, too.

The next thing we noticed is that most of the windows and glass doors have now been installed – they are all double glazed, which I was very pleased to see. I had thought that this would be beyond our budget, so I really was thrilled when I saw them. Heating and cooling such a large space will be quite expensive, so any extra insulation is a very good thing. We also noted that the walls were having insulation put in them – another good thing.

I must say, it is feeling more and more like a home every time we go there. I look forward to the day our goods and chattels arrive and we can start decorating our space. Our part of the house, which is about 25% of the total area isn’t that huge, but I imagine that it will feel like a bigger space because of the rest of the house being so big.

(cool drinks fridges and payment box!)

After exploring the first floor (Australian translation: ground floor), Craig got the ladder and we climbed up to the second floor. I should note here that we had to climb over a fence to actually get into the building site, as it was closed up for the weekend. The climb into the site was a little difficult for a person who is vertically challenged (me), and the climb up the ladder was somewhat more precarious. The ladder was a foldout ladder and bounced a bit as I climbed it…

The upstairs area is where the guestrooms are located – all five of them. It was amazing walking around in them and getting a feel for how they will be. The balcony area had been coated with waterproofing material and looked like it might still be drying, so we didn’t venture out there. We also got to see the cupboards that have been created between the rooms, which are long and narrow, but which will provide us with some much needed storage space. This innovative solution was suggested by our builder when I said I was worried we wouldn’t have enough space to store larger items, such as our suitcases.

Next week, we are having a meeting with our builder and architect to look at the interior design – the part I really like! I am definitely looking forward to the selection process. We have already talked about the benchtop material for our kitchen and the colour of the tatami-style tiles, now we need to choose the colours of all the other surfaces. It’s a pity that the wood of the frame is going to be covered, because the colour of the wood is really beautiful.

On the way back from The Frame, we decided to explore what was behind the very large torii on the next road over from the road leading up to our building site. Torii mean there is a shrine somewhere behind them, but we had no idea what it was and how far up the hill it was, because it is a wooded area. So we headed through and climbed the stairs that lead up to a plateau, which had a path to the entrance of the shrine, but interestingly also had a large parking area, which was filled with buses. It was a parking lot for the bus company that runs around Kyoto and up to the Kyoto Women’s University, which is just the other side of the torii.

Ahead of us was the entrance to the shrine, but still no clue as to what was there. There was a small building up further, which is the place where you pay the entrance fee and can buy small amulets related to the shrine – most temples and shrines have such a place. We asked the man what the place was and he told us it was the mausoleum of Toyotomi Hideyoshi!! I had no idea that he had been interred in Kyoto, although I knew he died here.

So, we paid the entrance fee and as we were about to go in, the man in the booth said it was up some stairs and would take about half an hour…he wanted know if we could make it ok!!! So, being the cavalier people we are (???) we said we would be ok – Craig even said we were fit! I would suggest it’s more like “fitter than I used to be, but we’ll give it a go”; after all, we climbed up to Kurama dera via the back way – once.

So, we go through entrance gate and are faced with a set of stairs going straight up the side of the hill. They were broken up into five sections, with a short level area between each section. I’m not sure how many stairs were in each section, but I’m guessing somewhere between 60 and 70. Not to be immediately defeated, I put my head down and started up. I had to stop a few times, but overall I did a lot better than I initially thought I would.

 (yes, this is half way up)

At the top of the stairs was another plateau and another gate, which I hoped led through to the mausoleum. Just before the gate, leaning against a tree, was a broom. The brooms here look like classic witches brooms, so my immediate thought was that it would have been much easier flying up here…Craig agreed.

On through the gate and we are confronted by another staircase – not as long as the first, but still a long way up, this time without any plateaux. By this time my legs were feeling a little less solid, so it was a bit harder going up, with the burn starting about half way up. After several rests to catch my breath and try to beat the lactic acid out of my thighs, we made it to the top. There was a five stone pagoda which sat on top of the burial mound of Toyotomi Hideyoshi. It was in a lovely setting on top of the hill, surrounded by trees.

We paid our respects and then rested for a while before starting the long descent. On the way out, I asked the man how many stairs there were up to the mausoleum. He said there were 489. Adding on the stairs up to the entrance, that was 522 in total (we counted them on the way out). My legs started stiffening up after we got home and I had had a cup of tea. I tried to get up to clean my cup and found that gravity had increased; or was it that my legs weren’t working as well as before??

Before I sign off, there is just one thing I haven’t mentioned in the last two posts, but which is a source of endless delight for me. Since the beginning of September, the signs of Halloween have been in evidence in nearly every shop you go into, with multitude decorations for sale, along with Halloween packaging on many standard food items and drinks and special Halloween food items for sale, especially cakes. It has been very difficult for me not to buy many, many items, although I have bought a few decorations for our flat, including one for the front door.

That’s all for now!!!!!

Cheers

It seems that I am finding it a little more difficult making the time to put together my posts recently, with time on the laptop being taken up doing marketing stuff…yes, stuff. It’s a technical term to cover pretty much anything we have been and are doing to try to get our name out ‘there’. We have been working hard to create a web site and Facebook page for our Minshuku and then trying to find avenues to push our business into the public realm. I suspect this will take a lot of time to achieve results.

We have also been grappling with bureaucracy here again and occasionally visiting our ever growing building site – once known as The Block. It is now more like The Frame and soon to be The Enclosure, or something. It keeps growing and now looks quite big. Somewhat comforting, given how much we’re spending on it!

So, to the website; we ‘went live’ just over a week ago, after a few issues with connecting to PayPal and Google. This is, in fact where the bureaucratic issues started. The lengths that you have to go to to prove who you are and that you are a legitimate business these days is quite cumbersome. This is exacerbated by the fact that these organisations are generally located in America and so have different terms and requirements to the Japanese, for some things. One issue we had to respond to was whether we were going to be trading in America and promising that we would pay our taxes in America if we did.

A lot of this, of course, has been brought about by the flow of monies between countries from criminal organisations, and for funding terrorism, as well as people trying to avoid paying tax in general. While none of this applies to us, of course, we still have to go through all the paperwork to prove our credentials. The end result is that we will be accepting payments via PayPal and we just received confirmation that we have been ‘indexed’ by Google. Being indexed means that people may now be able to find us through a Google search, if they use the right terms and if there aren’t many, many others competing to get their attention…

Trying to make yourself visible on Google is an art in itself. Having the right search ‘words’ (which can also mean phrases), being up to date, having things that people might be interested in seeing, and so on. There are many web sites dedicated to advising just how to do this, but, none-the-less, there are no guarantees. So, we have to wait, hope and continue trying to make links. Anyway, the address of our site is:

www.veganminshuku3neko.com

If you have any comments, or any suggestions, please email them to me.

Craig has also created a Facebook page to try to get our name out ‘there’. Updates of the building progress will be added to this page, along with other things such as food notes and links to relevant organisations. Other marketing stuff we have been doing includes gradually finding all the vegan and vegetarian travel oriented websites and listing ourselves on the most popular sites, such as HappyCow.

In terms of The Frame, ie our new home, it continues to grow, fast. On the Thursday after my last posting, we went to the bank to open a business account with the person who has been the translator at the meetings with our builder. We were supposed to go to the frame raising ceremony after this adventure, however, the day turned out to be quite wet and, as a result, building work was suspended for the day, which meant that the ceremony had to be delayed. So, on the Friday, we decided to go up to see how far along the building was. To say I was stunned as we rounded the corner is a massive understatement – I was literally lost for words (which, for me…). There was this massive wooden structure, with a roof on it! The workers were in the process of finishing the metal roof cladding as we arrived.

We have been up to have a look once more since then (they went ahead with the frame ceremony as soon as they finished, so didn’t have time to notify us) and there were only two workers on site, who were adding floors and commencing the walls. We were able to walk around the ground floor (or the first level, as it is here) and get a real feel for how it was going to be when enclosed. Today we’ll go back again to get another update – we don’t want to harass the carpenters too much!!

I mentioned above that we also had been grappling with bureaucracy again. This involved us trying to open a bank account, visiting a car dealer to enquire about buying a car and meeting with some insurance people to find out about insurance for our new home, as well as car insurance so that we now have the full costs of owning a vehicle and exactly what car insurance covers here.

(a Toyota Sienta – the car we are planning to buy)

At the bank we had to complete a form which was a pre-application – yes, we still have to complete an actual application form before we can open an account. The pre-application was to enable them to do checks on our company and see if there are any issues, particularly as we are foreigners. Anyway, they must have been happy with what they found (or didn’t find) because we have now received a letter telling us to come back to the bank to complete the application form. (it didn’t, by the way, say that we had been approved to open an account, just to come back). Later this week we will return to the bank armed with all our certificates, personal id and inkan, along with our interpreter, to open our account. It was proven to me that we needed to have the interpreter when even she had some difficulties knowing exactly what information they wanted when completing the pre-application form.

We also have to take updated company certificates for this visit, because the ones we had were over six months old – by two days. This meant a trip to the Legal Affairs Bureau yesterday, and a fee to pay to get the updated copies of the certificates. Luckily it was a nice day, so we decided to walk along the Kamogawa to get there; just under 3.5kms. A 7km round trip, low 30s temperature but not too humid so fairly comfortable, with dragonflies flitting around us and the various birds doing their thing. The Kamo was quite high because of recent rains brought by the typhoon that passed through here. Small fish were leaping up the few rapids. Very pleasant.

That brings me to the weather…we have had a couple of days that tried to resume the run of hot and humid (mushi mushi) weather, but most days are now in the low 30s or high 20s and not as humid as previously. Much more enjoyable. The only blip has been the typhoon which came through a couple of days ago, but as it happened we were spared the worst of it in the end. It was expected to go right over us – top winds of 160km/h and around 300mm of rain – however, it must have move further north than they expected, so we didn’t get too much of either.

Well, that’s it for now

Cheers

…and so I find myself in front of the keyboard again, wondering how to start…

Hi all, after yet another slight hiatus, here I am again bringing you all up to date with what has been happening this week in Kyoto – except it’s two weeks since my last transmission, so it should be these weeks in Kyoto. The main reason for the delay this time is that we only have one laptop on which to undertake larger tasks such as long emails, blogging and developing websites. During this period we have been putting together as much as we can for our minshuku website, hence the laptop has been fully occupied unless we are out.

In relation to our website, we are very close now to being able to ‘go live’, with a few minor edits to undertake and we have to open a bank account for our company before we can create a PayPal account to accept deposits for bookings. Hopefully we will have this completed by the end of this week. After we publish the site, we will also be creating a Facebook page to start our marketing effort. Then we start putting the word out and hoping for bookings.

On the other front, the construction of our house/minshuku is moving apace. In the last two weeks, the foundations have been finished. Quite a complicated process, involving three pours and lots of reo and formwork. As of my last post, the first pour into the base of the earthworks had occurred and the reo was being put on top of that. After it was completed some formwork was put around the reo to frame the edges. Then the second pour occurred.

I thought that would be it but when we went up to The Block a few days later some further formwork had been put on top of that to create bases for the walls of our structure and, in fact, the third pour had already occurred! Before work started at The Block, we had been told that the foundations would have to be inspected and approved by the authorities before anything further happened. So, I thought there would be a longish delay between them being finished and the framework starting…however, we received an email on the weekend indicating that the framework should be fully completed by the 7^th – ie this Thursday!!!!!!

Yesterday (Monday), we went up to see how far along they were and found around ten men working feverishly attaching the base beams to the foundations and building scaffolding around the entire base, which is over two storeys high. A screen will then be put around the whole scaffolding structure – in fact they were already starting to attach the screen when we got there. Having watched a new home being built across the road from our house in Adelaide, I am astounded at how fast this is all proceeding. We have been invited to visit the structure on Thursday, to have a look inside. Apparently you would normally have a framework raising ceremony at this time, but they indicated that it would be expensive, so said they weren’t planning one. It seems it is a Shinto ceremony, at which a Shinto priest officiates.

(our name printed on pre-formed beams!)

One thing I haven’t mentioned so far is the weather!!!! We had been having a run of days of 35 or more (and humid…) for the last few weeks and it was getting harder to go out knowing that it you would become a walking puddle almost immediately. The 30^th was yet again 35C and it seemed that it might just continue on for a while…then, on the 31^st, it was around 31C and it has been hovering around that temperature ever since! A very sudden change and it really does make it easier to face going out shopping, etc. Lovely. We have been able to open the windows at night to let fresh air in and we haven’t had the air cons on all night!!

(Serena thinks it’s hot)

We did undertake one ‘touristy’ outing during this period, despite the heat/humidity, and it was certainly worth it. We went to another shrine we had never been to, which involved a train ride, short walk and then a longer bus ride to get there (the reason we hadn’t been before). The shrine was built in 947CE by the then emperor in honour of a well known scholar and politician, Sugawara no Michizane. In 986CE, he was deified, with this being the first shrine in Japan to enshrine a person as a deity. Sugawara no Michizane was a prodigy child, able to read poetry at five years of age. He was writing poetry in Chinese at the age of 11. As a result, he is best known as the god of academics.

There are many cows in this shrine, as cows are believed to be messengers of the gods and it seems there may have been a connection between Sugawara no Michizane and cows. As a result, students who visit this shrine to pray to Tenjin (as the deified Sugawara no Michizane is known) for good results also seek out the cows to assist them. Generally, this takes the form of rubbing the head of the cow and then touching their own heads.

The shrine sits on a huge block of land and incorporates many buildings and a large garden. There are nearly 2,000 plum blossom trees (this being Tenjin’s favourite tree – apparently he wrote a haiku at the age of 5 about the plum blossom) along with around 300 maple trees. As a result, the shrine is one of the recommended places to visit during blossom time and in Autumn. One thing that drew my attention is the carvings around the base of the roof line on the rear and sides of the main hall. They are very intricate, highly coloured and are beautiful. They remind me of the carvings on one of the buildings in the temple and shrine complex at Nikko.

I have nothing in particular to report from the land of tv this post, in part because we haven’t seen as much tv recently, being occupied with the website and other issues, such as finding an accounting package I can use for the minshuku. It seems these days that you can’t buy accounting software as a one off purchase. All products appear to now be online, with a monthly fee attached.

Well, that’s about it for this post – there’s just one final item, the name we have decided for our minshuku:

Vegan Minshuku Sanbiki Neko

Sanbiki Neko translates as 3 cats. We felt we had to include them somehow, especially since the architect included them in all the iterations of our building plans.

Cheers!

(here’s a photo of me! Well, my tiger striped feet, anyway)

Now, which week are we up to???? Ah yes, week 38, somewhat warm (read mushi mushi) with a slight undertone of fire…

As I mentioned at the end of last week’s post, we went to watch the Gozan no Okuribi, or Daimonji last Wednesday night. It is the conclusion of the Obon festival on August 16 in Kyoto, when five giant bonfires are lit on mountains surrounding the city. It signals the moment when the spirits of deceased family members, who are said to visit this world during Obon, are believed to be returning to the spirit world.

So, what is the Obon festival???? It is a festival built around the Japanese Buddhist custom to honour the spirits of your ancestors. It has been celebrated in Japan for more than 500 years and traditionally includes a dance, known as Bon-Odori.

I had seen one of the sites on the mountains where one of the fires was going to be a few weeks ago – the trees were cut back and it had been set up to burn in the shape of one of the kanji; the kanji for large (‘dai’). So, I was hoping we would find a place where we could see more than one of the fires, including that site, and had read that the best place was near the fork of the Kamo river. The fires are lit one by one from 8pm, so I thought it would be nice to go up there early and have a picnic dinner.

We got off the train two stations early, at around 5:45 and walked the last 2kms (approx.) along the river. It had been a hot day but it was a lovely walk along the bank of the river. There were a number of spots that had good views of the one fire site I had seen, but we kept going in the hope we would see at least one other. Unfortunately, by the time we reached the designated place there were already hundreds of people, so we couldn’t get to where we wanted to be. In the end we decided to sit close by where we could at least see the ‘dai’ kanji fire.

We had a nice picnic (some tempura, inari and onigiri, washed down with sake and beer!!!) and awaited the fires. During this time, the number of people around us grew quite dramatically, until it was very crowded. Luckily we had a seat, having arrived early. When it came time to leave it took a long time to travel the 500 metres to the closest train station, with the crowd numbering in the thousands.

We tried to take photos when the bonfire we could see was lit, but our cameras didn’t like the low light very much, so they are somewhat blurry. I have included a photo from the internet of the ‘dai’ kanji and what each of the five fires look like.

This week we also made the longish journey to one of the large home centres to buy some new foam mattresses to put under our futons. The ones we had were bought back in January 2015 to be used by guests in our flat, and were not in the best condition. We ended up buying the most expensive ones in the store, which are made with memory foam, but they were much cheaper than some we had seen in iSetan and Takashimaya, both high end department stores. They were delivered a couple of days later (eagerly awaited…) and they are much more comfortable than what we had, particularly for me as a ‘side-sleeper’.

Our other major outing this week (in the humidity and heat – it has been around 35 most days and I turn into a walking puddle) was a visit to The Block (aka ‘once was carpark’). This time there were no neighbours out and about, so we were just able to get some photos and then return home. There were some workers there, who were having lunch at the time we arrived. They were in the process of putting together the ‘reo’ for the full foundation. Interestingly, there had already been some concrete poured into the base of the foundation channels onto which they were installing the reo.

You may notice in the photo of the construction workers that they had brought with them an industrial fan, which they were using while they had their lunch break!!!! It was hot, so I thought it was quite sensible, if a little odd looking. Not something I have ever seen in Australia…

One  thing I haven’t mentioned is the very large number of dragonflies that are around here at the moment. There are a number of different ones, differing in size and in colour. On the way to The Block, we came in close proximity to two different ones and tried to get good photos of them. As with anything that  moves fast and is small, this was exceedingly difficult (especially with a mobile phone) but we managed to get a couple of photos that at least give an idea of how really beautiful these insects are.

In the world of tv, this week we watched a show about words and phrases in Japanese that are difficult to say – and we’re talking difficult for Japanese people! They went through the top 10, and the word at number 10 position just happened to be the same word used in a game show we saw some years ago here, where the contestants had to say it correctly three times:-

Atatakakatta

(meaning: past tense of warm (atatakai))

It was quite funny watching people stumbling over the pronunciations of all of these words and phrases! In some cases they just could not say it at all. The number 1 word was:

Shujutsuchuu

(meaning: shujutsu means surgical operation, so something to do with an operation (code for I’m not quite sure))

Photos of some of them for those who read/speak Japanese:

And so, like sand through the hourglass, this week comes to an end. All I can say is that it definitely was not atatakakatta!!

Cheers until next time…