Ah, the long hot summer, with a few typhoons thrown in for good measure! It has remained hot since last we spoke and it still hasn’t been overly humid, except when there are typhoons around – like yesterday. We have had quite a few guests staying with us and some of them have not really enjoyed the heat, especially on those days hovering close to 40C. In fact we had a couple of guests arrive for check-in last week looking very hot and decidedly flushed and flustered recently.

Yesterday we were to have had a full house, just in time for the first typhoon of the season to come close to us. I say were because two of the guests left a day early so that they could get to their next destination, since we knew the shinkansen in this region would be stopped for at least 24hrs. On Monday night we had some very heavy rain at times and the wind was quite gusty during the day yesterday, but not with the consistent fury we experienced when the typhoon passed directly over us in 2018. We ended up having around 125ml in the 24 hrs of Tuesday, and nearly 170ml from late Monday through to early this morning.

Being so busy with guests coming and going, we haven’t had overly much time to do anything other than our jobs (ie cleaning, serving, check-in and outs, shopping, etc) and this has been exacerbated by a couple of slight issues – Craig hurt his back and then I broke a toe (yes, again) on the last day of July. As a result, the only outings we have had in this period actually occurred in July, in fact I left them out of my last post because it was already quite long – lucky, otherwise I wouldn’t have had much to write about this time!

The first two outings happened on the same day, when we decided to visit a place we had been to before but had never explored overly thoroughly. Takako had been talking about her favourite temple and how she had taken a number of guests there, and it became an itch I had to scratch. When we set off for Nanzenji it was a hot day, so we decided to catch a bus rather than walk there, as we would normally do.

As it happened, when we passed Rachel’s machiyas on the way to the bus stop she was outside, so we said hello. While talking she mentioned that she had noticed a new café which served all vegan food. This café was located fairly near where we were headed, so we decided to check it out after visiting Nanzenji.

The temple was founded in 1291 and is another of the huge temples here, with a lot of land and many sub-temples. As with most, it has been added to and rebuilt over the years and one very interesting addition is a large aqueduct that runs through the grounds. The aqueduct was constructed during the Meiji period (1868-1912), extending from lake Biwa through to Kyoto, with the purpose of carrying goods and water to Kyoto in long narrow boats. It is an amazing construction, known as the Suirokaku Aqueduct, and was designed by Sakuro Tanabe with consideration for the scenery in the precincts it passes through. The arched abutments of the structure are made of bricks and granite.

From the temple grounds, you can climb up onto a section of the aqueduct, which is not only surrounded by greenery but also by having water running through it, it was lovely and cool up there. The other advantage of walking along the aqueduct is some very nice views over the temple and surrounds. We didn’t walk the entire length of the walking path on the day, but that just gives us another nice place to go to in Autumn! Truth is, I would have been perfectly happy to just sit up there with a picnic lunch and while away the time, but we didn’t have provisions with us. Next time…

After our wander in the lovely forested area, we had to set off out into the asphalt heat sink to walk over to the café for our investigation – it was, however, definitely worth it. Toriba Café is located in an old renovated machiya and is a very nice place to sit and enjoy the surrounds, along with very good coffee and food. It is on the slightly expensive side, but I thought it was good value. While we were waiting for our order, I decided to take some photos of the interior and a Japanese man with very good English came over and started telling me about the place. Turns out he was the owner – and he also owns another café in the Daimaru department store in Kyoto, along with another café, a burger joint and an izakaya in Tokyo, and all of them are vegan!

On the menu there are some sandwiches, including cucumber, ‘egg’ and ‘katsu’ varieties. Toriba san explained that he had some chefs working for him and when he opened his first eatery he told them that he wanted everything to be plant-based. They were a little flabbergasted and didn’t know how to start, so he bought a meat burger which he gave them and told them he wanted a plant-based version – which they did. He went on like this with other items, including an egg sandwich, which they replicated and I have to say, it is fantastic! It looks and tastes like the real thing (well, as I remember it). Absolutely amazing.

This brings me to the last outing; we went to a party!!! After our visit to Toriba, we started following him on Insta and a couple of weeks later he started putting up posts about an opening party, for the café. It was starting at the café at around lunchtime until about 7pm, then moving on to a nightclub from 8pm till late. It has been a long time since we had been to a party and it seemed appropriate for us to attend, as fellow vegan business owners (although not quite on the same scale as him!).

On the day, we actually dressed up a bit (for the second time in two months 😊) and headed off to the café late in the afternoon. It turned out that most of the people there were friends and acquaintances from Tokyo – and most were uber cool. I was glad I had dressed up a bit. So, we drank coffee and had a sandwich, then later Craig had an espresso martini and I had a highball, which was made with a lightly peated single malt whisky. While we were sitting there Chisayo, the Japanese woman who has made it her mission to explain about vegans, vegetarians and those who like gluten-free food to as many of the restaurateurs, café and bar owners as she can get to, turned up. It was very nice to catch up with her again, although we do seem to run into each other fairly often. She told us she is currently busy finalising the creating of an interactive map of vegan and vegan option restaurants for tourists. She is an amazing woman and we were lucky enough to meet her early in our stay here.

At around 7pm everyone started leaving the café, so we headed off towards the nightclub. As there was a time gap to fill, and the nightclub was near the river, we went down to stand by the river and watched the bats come out as the sun set (that, too, was wonderful).

The bats were too small to capture

There was a rather hefty cover charge to get into the nightclub, though you did get one free drink inside. Thankfully there was also some food being served, which was supposed to be pizza but turned out to be essentially a pizza doorstop – though very tasty. Music-wise, there were three different DJ sets, the first played some pretty good music, overall, then the second set was Toriba san himself, with a friend, and it wasn’t quite to our taste, playing mostly modern Japanese music. The final DJ played House music, which he is apparently famous for, and he was good. We actually got up and danced for a while, which we haven’t had the chance to do anywhere here, other than when I did (by myself) at the drag show we went to. We had fun, but unfortunately we had to leave reasonably early because we had a guest and to give Ziggy his injection.

So, all in all an eventful time recently, and once my toe is better we’ll be back to going for walks and visiting more places.

Cheers for now!

Me being uber cool at Toriba Cafe…Craig too

Shapes engraved into a paved path at Nanzenji

The view from one of the shopping centres we visit regularly (NW, NE & E)

A giant meringue cloud peeking over our hills

Our friend, Rachel, has fostered a lovely Doberman

A butterfly visiting our yuzu tree

Mum can never really get far from the kids…

I thought my bed felt lumpy

Halloween has already started at Costco – wow!

Sigh

(It’s shiny because I had rubbed on anti inflammatory cream – carefully!)

Hello all, here I m back at the keyboard (finally) to start recounting what we have been doing since last we spoke 😊. It is mid-summer here now and it is fairly hot, although not yet overly humid (a blessing). It seems the rainy season has now finished, sometime within the last two weeks, so now we need to water the garden beds regularly. All the days since the end of the rain have been over 30C, with most hovering between 33 and 37C.

Despite the heat and the rain, we have had quite a few guests throughout this period. Our guests seem to have coped admirably well with the heat (and the rain), though Rachel (our friend down the road) has had at least one guest suffer with heat stroke. Some guests are going out as normal but then coming in late in the afternoon for a rest and freshen up. We actually had one guest tell us that she didn’t expect it to be so hot and didn’t bring enough clothing to swap out the sweaty clothing (and, ironically, she used to live in Delhi).

As a result of the heat, we have been going out on excursions mostly in the late afternoon and into the evening. There were a couple of exceptions to this, one was a trip up to Ohara and Sanzenin to check the hydrangeas there, and the other was a walk into town on one of the slightly cooler days, when it was sub 30C (just). We drove up to Ohara partly to get some vegetable pickles from a producer up there and partly to see the hydrangeas since it was that time of year. We always love visiting this temple, and being in the mountains it is always slightly cooler, a bonus in summer. As it happened, though, the hydrangeas hadn’t reached their peak up there though it was still lovely.

After visiting there we decided to have lunch somewhere and had discovered there was a restaurant nearby that had some vegan dishes. One slight problem, though, there was a queue waiting for a table when we got there, so we gave up on that and headed off to the next valley over to go to Yoshuji at the base of Kurama-dera. We love to eat at Yoshuji, so we will take any excuse to go there!!

In lieu of a food photo…we ate too quickly!!!

After lunch we walked up the main road of the village to check a stone masonry yard, because we finally had enough money coming through the business to buy a stone lantern for the front yard. This was always the plan, but back in 2018 we couldn’t afford the $1,000+ price tag of a good quality stone piece. I knew there was at least one stone mason in Kurama that made the kind of lantern I really wanted, though as it turned out, we discovered later there are quite a few stone masons because the stone from the area is quite famous for its colour and fairly sought after.

The yard is up ahead

Anyway, at the yard I saw ‘The Lantern’, one that I loved, but the owner wasn’t there, so a man across the road said we had to ring him and there was a sign at the gate with his details. We also took a couple of photos of ‘The Lantern’ to help us describe it over the phone – well, for Takako describe it, since our Japanese just wouldn’t be anywhere near adequate for this transaction.

So, a few days later Takako called, described it and he gave us a price which we could afford – however, after a little more discussion, it turned out he had mistaken which lantern we were talking about. Just to clarify, we sent him the photo we had taken (after a few issues with the size of the photo and being able to send it via email) and he came back and said that this lantern would be double the price he had given us…! I said that unfortunately we couldn’t afford that much and Takako told him, though she kept talking to him, saying we were nice people and other things. Anyway, he agreed we could have ‘The Lantern’ for the original price!!! I was jumping up and down (as quietly as I could) while Takako tied up the details. A week later the mason delivered Kyou (as we are calling ’The Lantern’, because its shape looks like the kanji for Kyou, as in Kyoto). We ended up giving him ¥20,000 more than he had agreed to in part because he delivered it and he also helped us put it in place, along with some homemade bread rolls. Apparently he was thrilled we gave him that extra money, and the bread 😊.

One other big event for us in June was attending the debut drag performance of our Spanish friend Nacho. We had been trying to catch up with him but weren’t able to due to the huge influx of guests we had. So, early June I contacted him to try to organise something and he told me that he was going to be debuting at a drag show being held in the Mexican restaurant at the hotel he works at. I thought this would be a fantastic way to celebrate Pride Month and to show support for him, so we went along.

The hotel he works at is an amazing place, one of the more expensive places but quite alternative in design, and the restaurant lived up to this. There was a DJ and a dance floor as well as the stage. I felt like it was back in time when I used to go to the Mars Bar, with all the drag queens, the glitter and sequins, and the super high heels. Nacho was on early as Mari Consha, initially playing shamisen and singing, and then later doing two other performances. He was obviously nervous initially, but did really well in the end and was well received by the crowd. It was a fun night and I got to dance too, so fantastic all up.

Unfortunately we couldn’t get any photos of Mari and, yes, the last photo shows two guys wearing only white undies and small angel wings dancing…

Speaking of performances, we had a guest stay with us recently who is an Associate Professor at a Swedish university of Japanese studies, including culture and music, particularly focusing on the shakuhachi. He actually lived in Japan for 20 years and during that time he studied under a shakuhachi master and eventually received an honorary name of Jinmei. He also studied music with a focus on the shakuhachi at Tokyo University.

A photo of our guest taken from the internet playing the shakuhachi

Though he isn’t vegan, he chose to stay with us because of our location near Tofukuji temple, where he was meeting with the head monk in relation to his studies. He also went on to visit two other temples in other places in Japan and performed a couple of concerts in Tokyo, along with another person who was playing a shamisen. While he was here, he asked if it would be ok to practice a couple of songs that he was playing in the concert which he wanted to do extra work on in our dining room. Did we mind??? It was a lovely half hour interlude being able to hear an expert playing his instrument and some wonderful, evocative music.

The final two excursions mentioned above involved going into town to firstly see the floats for the Gion Matsuri being built in situ on the streets and then to go to one of the Yoi nights, mainly to buy two new chimaki for our business and home entrances. Yes, July is Gion Matsuri month, when the giant wooden floats grace the streets of the city centre. The festival has been held annually since around the year 1000CE, though with a few gaps, including WWII and the recent pandemic. It originally started in the late 800s following an epidemic when the Emperor ordered activities be held to appease the gods of disease, but was only undertaken sporadically, as necessary, until the annual event started. Formally, it is a Shinto festival out of Yasaka shrine and there are many formal ceremonies held during the festival, but it is best known for its two Yamaboko processions of floats, which take place on July 17 and 24. Funnily enough, even though this is one of the biggest and most famous of all the festivals held in Japan, virtually none of our guests had any idea it was on!!

There are two different types of floats, the smaller Yama floats (about 6m tall and up to 1,600kgs) which carry deities within, of which there are 24, and the larger Hoko floats (about 27m tall and 11 tonnes), which recall the naginata (Japanese pole blades) which were used in the original purification ceremony, of which there are ten. They are constructed mainly of wood and rope, no nails are used, and covered with huge tapestries. The Hoko are pulled around the streets using long ropes with between 30 and 40 men pulling them. On the three nights leading up to the processions, there are huge street parties known as Yoi, with food and alcohol stalls and other stalls selling assorted Japanese items, and the main streets where the floats are located are closed to traffic.

The first time we went in it was most pleasant, we walked in to town and then went to Engine Ramen (well, we were in town…) and then we wandered around first viewing some of the floats then we decided to go and try out a bar at Ace Hotel (where Nacho works), which was nice. After this we walked back home, through the Gion area, along one of my favourite streets there where I have seen many geiko and maiko in the past, with the vague hope of seeing some more. As luck would have it, we ended up walking behind three women, two maiko and one geiko, and one of the maiko was very dressed up, looking like she might have been out on her first formal event. Further down the street a crowd of Japanese people were standing in a group on the road, a few with cameras. They appeared to be waiting for these three to return, which was confirmed when they started clapping as the three neared them. It was all very lovely.

The geiko is on the left, with a maiko in the middle and the very dressed up maiko on the right, likely on her first professional outing

The second time we went in we expected there would be a lot of people attending the Yoi parties, but that night it was wall to wall people. I have no idea how many people were actually there, but my guess would be over 300,000, perhaps closer to 400,000 (or higher?). You just had to go with the flow of people, which was slow and inexorable. As we were locked into the movement, I did think vaguely of those festivals where panic suddenly swept through the crowd and people were hurt, however, we just had to had those chimaki and once we were in there, we were there. We managed to buy the chimaki and then had to get out of the crowd, which took a while. An experience, but I think I will try to go in earlier next time!

Well, that’s it for now – Kyou is happily sitting out the front under the Japanese maple, the chimaki are above both doors and the weather is going to be 35+C for the foreseeable future.

Cheers!

Matsuri diorama in a shop window

My latest efforts and close-ups

Field of red shiso and some jizo at Sanzenin

It was getting darker as we were walking, so I looked up to check the clouds and there it was, the dragon cloud!!! (Dragons bring rain…)

A fur friend display at Mumokuteki (l) and my newest fur friend (r)

A very interesting bar entryway

Hydrangeas from Sanzenin (top) and Chishakuin, which just keep on blooming

Zara still dreams of being a swan…

Miro checks outside her house, with Zowie on the deck below, Zara above and Akashi on top of the cupboard

Contemplation…

Visitors! Again!! How lucky have we been to be able to finally see so many of our friends from Australia? It really has been very nice to spend time with friends, not just messaging or video chatting (though, that is good too 😊).

Speaking of friends, we are lucky enough to meet some very nice people while they stay with us too, people that we stay in touch with after they leave, and that happened last month with two guests from Wales. They are currently on a long holiday exploring new places in the world, one having left their job and the other sold their business. They stayed with us for six nights, while they explored this part of the world, and they were a pleasure to have here.

Both enjoyed running, biking and walking, and they would get up early every morning and go for a long run, or do an exercise regime at a local park – most mornings it was a run. On their last night here they invited us out to have dinner with them, which was very nice. We went to Tanto, an okonomiyaki and teppanyaki restaurant with a separate vegan menu. We had a lovely time and shared some good food!

View out the window

Our Australian friends also stayed with us for six nights, arriving a few days after our Welsh friends left. Triscia was keen to see a traditional Japanese house while she was here and it happens that there is a house which belonged to a famous potter, Kanjiro Kawai, which has been kept as it was as a museum and which is very close to us. I had never been inside, though we had talked about going there, so it was also new to me.

It was really an amazing place, with most of the original furniture still in place, and the two kilns he used are still in situ, one a small item kiln and the other a huge, stepped kiln with eight chambers for larger pieces and firings. The large one was phenomenal, built on a slope at the back of the house, literally stepping up a small hill, called noborigama kiln (climbing kiln). Firings lasted up to 48 hours and consumed over 2,000 bundles of firewood, with the interior temperature reaching around 1,350C. His ceramics are very interesting, some being fairly ‘typical’ pieces, very utilitarian, the others being more artistic including some rather unusual pieces.

The following day we went to the Okazaki shrine, famous for all the effigies of rabbits. It is said that the Okazaki Shrine dates back to around 794CE and is one of four original shrines that were built in Heian-kyo (Kyoto), the new capital, to protect the emperor. It is not a large shrine but worth going to, to see all the rabbits 😊 – apparently there used to be a lot of rabbits living in the area, when it was first built.

After this we went to Heian Jingu to walk through the lovely garden there. Late May through to mid June is one of my favourite times of the year with my favourite plant, the iris, being in flower. It is also the time that water lilies come into flower, hence my naming of this time as the ‘Monet season’. While it was a little early for both, I wasn’t disappointed as some of the purple irises were in bloom and the water lily leaves were open, with some flowers dotted around amongst the leaves. Gorgeous.

Next day we visited Ryoan-ji, famous for the rock garden and then an art gallery I had been wanting to go to for a long time – ever since I saw the outside of the building. Another place that we just hadn’t got around to…

The garden area around Ryoan-ji is filled with cedar trees and other plantings and it has a large pond, which was filled with water lilies (Monet season 😊) and is a very relaxing, peaceful area for a stroll. Apart from the rock garden itself, the temple building has some fusuma (sliding doors) which have amazing dragons painted on them. It seems a literal translation of ryoan is peaceful dragon.

The art gallery we visited (which is just down the road from Ryoan-ji) is named Insho-Domoto Museum of Fine Arts. When I first saw the building, apart from my mouth falling open all I could say was “Wow”. I loved it. So, why it has taken so long for me to get there I don’t know, but I finally did and it lived up to my expectations, and more. The entire building, both exterior and interior was designed by the artist Insho Domoto to house his works and was built in 1966. After his death it was donated to Kyoto prefecture, in total. His artworks are based on his philosophy – “The true tradition is to break with tradition and create new art” – hence his paintings constantly covered new subject matter and used different styles, without staying in a specific style. I look forward to returning to see more of his works.

The weather, as expected for this time of year, has gradually been warming up and we have had a reasonable amount of rain. So far it hasn’t been too humid, but that too will come. The rainy days are a little difficult for our guests, of course, but June is generally known as the rainy season time. Interestingly, we have continued to get bookings for this time, although we did block out around a week’s worth of time off, for a little RNR. During this time we took the opportunity to go to another garden which we have been to before but it definitely has the Monet season beauty I love, with many irises and water lilies, along with many hydrangeas. The garden I am talking about is at Umenomiya-taisha shrine – quite a long bus ride away, but definitely worth it.

We walked through from the entrance to the exit, then walked back again (hence the huge number of photos – there are many more…), it truly is wonderful. Maybe that’s why the cranes return every year to nest there??? After soaking up all that floral beauty we walked over to the Arashiyama area and had lunch at Musubi café. The food is good and they have vegan desserts (which we always take away because the food fills us up!!!), what more could you want?

On the way home we walked through Chishakuin temple, just to soak up a bit more hydrangea beauty. Better to walk through there to get home than up a street 😊.

Well, that’s it for now. We are currently awaiting our visa renewals – fingers crossed for a three year renewal…

Cheers!

Two of my arrangements (top) and one by Triscia

Craig and Triscia

A ceramic and a wood carving by Kanjiro Kawai

How to tell if your cat may be taking drugs…

Sitting on two boxes of insulin syringes (L) – later (R)

What the hell is a Caterpy Lion???

Is it just me, or do these look very unappetising?

Spring and Monet season

Don’t be Koi… 🙂

The only iris I caught in our garden

Irises not from our garden

Varied shapes and colours of hydrangeas (and there are many more at Umenomiya-taisha)

Me out hunting irises in Monet season

Visitors! In amongst all the guests we have been hosting, along came some friends from Australia who we have not seen in the flesh (as it were) for a long time 😊.

Yes, tis me again (finally) bringing you another episode of life in post-pandemic Kyoto. More specifically, life for two ryokan operators – and I finally feel I can legitimately call us that now that we are getting a fairly consistent stream of guests staying with us. The really full-on rush has passed, along with the blossom, though as I said we are consistently having people pass through. They are a mix of people from Booking.com and our own website and more of them are staying for at least three nights, which is much more comfortable. We have noticed that many of the people booking for longer stays through B.com (my abbreviation) are from Germany, with some from France and a few other countries in Europe.

Most of the one night stays have now passed, with only one more to come now, which is great. While I am still doing a lot of ironing, with quite a few six hour days coming after breakfast service, I don’t feel quite as pushed for time. Weather-wise, it has been overall very pleasant, with no need for air-cons or under floor heating and the windows are open as often as possible, though there have been some very wet days. More days like that to come soon, no doubt.

Back to our friends – they arrived mid-April, with Steven arriving first and staying seven nights and the two others arriving a few days later and staying four. On the first day Steven was here we took a lovely stroll in the sunshine and visited a Samurai museum (which turned out to just be a display of a few replicas), tried to visit a sake brewery (which was closed) but generally just enjoyed being outside.

The next day we went to Kennin-ji temple, mainly to see the peonies they have in bloom and because we hadn’t visited for a long time. Kennin-ji was founded in 1202 CE and claims to be the oldest Zen temple in Kyoto. It is located in the Gion area on a large block of land (which would be very valuable indeed) and, as with so many temples, it has been re-built on a number of occasions, including after damage caused during the 13^th century Onin wars. The peonies were gorgeous (of course) and the whole temple enclave is very pleasant to walk around. They also had an exhibition of fusuma doors created by Japanese artist Toba Mika, which are covered in dyed fabric showing scenery from Vietnam. They were really beautiful and very peaceful in feeling.

After the others arrived the next day, we took a walk up to the Kiyomizu-dera area, then went to Engine Ramen for dinner (waiting for around 40 minutes in a queue to get in).

The following day we went to Fushimi Inari, walked up and over the mountain and came back via the forest at the back of the mountain. A fantastic hike, all up, and we even stopped at a small shrine near the mountain to check it out, after an older Japanese woman showed us that the gate into the lower area of the shrine is not locked and hence we could climb down into the lower area. It turned out to be an amazing space, with a created waterfall, that could be used for shugendou purposes. Shugendou literally means “the path of training and testing” or “the way to spiritual power through discipline”, and the practitioners undertake trials such as standing under a waterfall dressed only in a loincloth while chanting (not sure if women partake in these trials). Freezing cold…

The last two days were spent visiting the Kyoto Botanical Gardens and the Toji Market, which was very large and very crowded but a great place to look for antiques and local handcrafts.

We were all asked to step back off the path, then this procession came through (the really important monk is the one in purple)

I bought a lovely vase from this man, who is the maker

After visiting the gardens, we also took our friends to see something I had always been curious about, but hadn’t got around to doing – visiting a temple where the ceiling has been made from old floorboards from Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s castle, Fushimi Castle also known as Momoyama Castle. The temple we went to visit, Genko-an, is close to the gardens and seemed to be an interesting place other than just for the ceiling.

The reason these boards were taken from the castle is that a very bloody battle had been fought there in 1600 and the floorboards had become deeply stained with the blood of the samurai and soldiers who had died there. There seem to be many different versions of what exactly happened at the castle, how many men died there and why the floorboards ended up as ceiling boards, but they are known as chitenjo (literally blood ceiling, although the Genko-an website in English calls theirs the crimson ceiling).

The temple itself isn’t overly large, but it is very picturesque. There is a lovely garden at the back of the temple, and it can be seen from the main hall through two unusual windows which are side-by-side, One is round and the other square. These are known as the “satori no mado” and “mayoi no mado” respectively. “Satori no mado” or Window of Realisation (satori is a Japanese Buddhist term for awakening) is round, which is meant to symbolise Zen maturity, completeness and enlightenment, while “mayoi no mado” or Window of Delusion (mayoi is a Japanese Buddhist term for inability to reach enlightenment) is square, and meant to symbolise confusion, ignorance, and immaturity, or the life of samsara, ie a life of human suffering.

Interestingly, above these windows (and indeed the whole ceiling of the main hall) are the stained floorboards. There were at least three clear footprints on the ceiling, along with one handprint and some other unusual shapes (one looked somewhat like the side of a face) that I saw, but what really shook me was the gradual realisation that all of the boards were stained – it was a fairly large hall and hence quite a large expanse of ceiling. After that, I stopped looking. At the time I didn’t know that there were three other temples which had also been the recipients of the floorboards, so I have to assume that the number of men who died was quite a bit larger than the ten that one website claims.

One thing I didn’t mention above; as we were making our way home after our walk around Fushimi Inari, we came up to a T-junction in the backstreets near our home where the minor road approaching the larger road has a fairly steep downward slope. I was at the front of the four of us (Craig was at home waiting for a check-in), and noticed a small but extremely overloaded truck (carrying large beams of wood) approaching the corner at what was clearly too high speed. I ran as far off the road as I could and I think I called out “look out” or something like that, as the truck came towards the corner. As it rounded the corner it swerved over to our side of the road and ended up on two wheels (I thought I was done for…and likely the others too), but somehow he dragged it back but then it swerved to the other side of the road and ended up on two wheels. As we all spun to watch it, I thought it was gone for sure this time. Unbelievably he managed to drag it back, only for the same thing to happen again, although this time it wasn’t as extreme and the next time it thudded down on all four wheels, just in time to take a curve in the road. Adrenalin! We couldn’t believe no-one was hurt. Thankfully there were no other cars nearby, especially coming around that curve in the opposite direction, as it is a blind curve and they wouldn’t have know until it was too late.

In the next episode: visitors arrive from Australia!!

Cheers!

Dessert! Made with beans and agar jelly

The weird flower from above, with Craig’s hand for size comparison and the side view

Petal!!!

...and speaking of flowers, some of my arrangements, and including my new vase below

A bit of whimsy…

Zara dreaming of Swan Lake

Mum and the kids

Hi all, I have finally had some free time to edit photos and sit down to begin writing. It has been a very intense time since my last post and I am grateful to have this time before next week, during which we will again have a full house. Interestingly it is also Golden Week next week, so I am not sure if the foreign guests we have coming are aware of this, or it is just coincidental. What it means for them is that it will be difficult to catch any trains which travel inter prefecture, especially the shinkansen, without having reserved seats.

Anyway, returning to the spring rush, after my last post, for around three weeks, we had only two days where there were no room turnarounds, ie check-out at around 10am and check-in at around 2pm. This is a fairly intense process of stripping, cleaning and re-setting – very physical and has to be done fast. It also produces a lot of washing to be done and subsequent ironing. As we have no dryer it all has to hang outside, so, if it rains that can cause delays (which it did…). As a person who has studiously avoided ironing all my life (mainly by buying clothing that does not require ironing, especially linen), I suddenly found myself doing a LOT of ironing. On one day I did over 6 hours of ironing!!!

What all of this caused was a major shortage of sheets, quilt covers and pillowcases. There were times when I was ironing pillowcases straight out of the washing machine, though it wasn’t possible for the larger items, so Craig was ironing after dinner while we watched tv. Our washing machines, along with the dishwasher, were running flat out to keep up with all the cleaning and we also had to buy a new iron at one point, as the old one was struggling.

The other side of the workload was, of course, providing breakfasts every morning for a lot of people. This required a lot of shopping and prep work, most of which was carried out by Craig. All in all, it was quite tiring and made me think that we should put a stop to one night stays (because they caused a lot of the more intense work), which we have now done on Booking.com. Many of the one-nighters were also not vegan or vegetarian and were causing some issues. Having said that, a few of the non-veg crowd were very nice, including an older French man who spoke very limited English but went to the trouble of writing a thankyou note in English to give us before he left.

One other major issue with having room turnarounds day in and day out is that we were unable to go out to do any personal shopping on those days. All in all, a learning experience and we are now better prepared for any future peak times and have adjusted the information and settings on Booking.com to try to improve our situation. The flip side is that we did have some lovely people staying here, one of whom was not vegan but who chose to stay with us because we have the rainbow flag on our home page. So, we also provided a place for her to stay where she felt accepted and comfortable 😊.

Weather-wise, it was warmer earlier than usual in March which actually brought the blossom on earlier than it would normally open. In fact, I believe it was the earliest blooming since records began to be kept of these things (ie, quite a long time ago). We have also had a bit more rain than usual which didn’t help keeping the blossom on the trees. As a result of all of this many people who had booked to stay in Kyoto specifically for blossom viewing were a little disappointed, and there were a lot of people in Kyoto, comparable to the crowds in 2019 (ie pre the ‘difficulties’).

During the time when we were flat out, the blossom came and went but we did manage to get out on the two available days to do some hanami (blossom viewing). Knowing we would have a little time, I tried to find somewhere reasonably close that we had never been to before and found a small shrine – Rokusonno jinja – which had a small collection of trees. It was about a 45 minute walk from home, but near the Aeon Mall where we do a lot of our shopping, so we were able to combine the two into a nice (longish) walk.

The shrine was first established on the site in 963, however the main building was rebuilt in the early 1700s, as it had been damaged due to various conflicts previously. After visiting the shrine, we walked to the mall via Toji temple, finding a really interesting building behind the temple which appears to be a school associated with the temple. It is a very grand, rather monumental looking building, somewhat reminiscent of Egyptian design.

As usual, we also got photos of the local blossom trees.

The other outing was a walk into to town, via Kiyamachi dori, one of my favourite streets in Kyoto, also to do some shopping for the business. It was a lovely sunny day, the blossom was gorgeous and the crowds were heaving. It felt really good to be out in the sun and walking. Neither of us have had time to undertake our usual exercise regime since mid to late March, so I needed to stretch out my legs with a nice long walk!

On a side note, our kittens – Zara and Akashi – turned 1 year old on the 12^th of April. They are both larger than their mum but still very active (in a kitten-like way), and when they are really worked up they run, jump and fly over the furniture, at which time it is better to be out of their way. Sometimes they start up just after dinner, at around 9:30pm, when tired guest house operators need their rest… Also, our wisteria plant has bloomed properly for the first time.

That’s all for now.

In the next episode: visitors arrive from Australia!

Cheers!

We had a new visitor recently – a very large, full-tailed version of Tahlia.

The tiniest iron of them all!

Our wisteria!

The lovely, local, port wine magnolia

Just lazing around

Watching them watch us!

The Ikebana critic at work

My latest efforts – the first one ended up looking a little like a flower alien, and the second came about because one of the kitten terrorists stole two of the front flowers…

A new dahlia for the garden

It’s a crows life…

Whew, and it has started! This applies both to the sakura season and to our busy time. It started slowly last week, with one guest arriving on Monday (who is staying with us for 15 nights!), and then we had arrivals on Friday and Saturday, which meant all of the rooms were occupied. Each of the rooms was only occupied by one guest, but each room still has to be set up and then later cleaned whether there is one or two guests. By next Wednesday we will be back to our one guest for breakfast, but we have another two guests arriving that day, then on Friday the real rush begins. So, we have had a slightly lighter start to prepare us, which is helpful!. All of the singles (except our long termer) booked via Booking.com, and only one of the four is a veggie person, so it will be interesting to see what the others say about us in reviews…

On to a slightly more routine topic – the weather. It has been a mix of warm and sunny, often in the low 20s, and cool and overcast/wet days recently, though we did have one more day of snow before the end of February. The sunny days are glorious and make for perfect sightseeing weather. Which we have done a little of recently, thanks to the first guests we had staying here in March.

Just a little snow

The two guests in question first sent us an email in January, asking a few questions about Kyoto, getting here and the availability of food. We often get queries like these, and not just from those who intend to stay with us. Anyway, there was quite a bit of back and forward, and in the end they said that though they usually like to spoil themselves and stay in 4-star+ accommodation, they were so happy with the service and advice we had given them, they had decided to stay with us! We, of course, were a little nervous at this prospect, since we are not a Western style accommodation, having tatami flooring and futon beds. Definitely not high end, more traditional Japanese style.

Based on the above and the fact they had a few issues getting from the airport to Tokyo and getting train tickets, we decided to pick them up from the station. As it turned out, they did have some issues getting from the train to the exit where the pick-up area is. I had gone with Craig to the station so I could go to the exit and keep an eye out for them. As I was standing there, about 10 minutes after they should have been out, a Japanese woman with a baby and pram, approached me and via Google translator asked me “who are you waiting for at 3:30pm?”. As you can imagine, I was both incredulous and bemused that someone would know I was waiting for anybody there at that exact time, especially since there were literally hundreds of people coming and going. So, I said who and that they were Americans, and she rushed off. Before I had a chance to gather myself and go after her, she had disappeared into the crowd.

Some time later, I saw a tall man and a smaller blond woman who, from a distance, looked very like the photo our guests had sent us. I also noticed the Japanese woman with pram nearby. It turns out they had been going in circles (due to some misdirection) and nearly falling over on the escalator to top it off. At some point this woman had become involved in proceedings. Needless to say, we were all relieved to see each other!!! That night we made them dinner (as they had requested) and they insisted we eat with them. After that  we were like old friends. On their first day we made some suggestions about things to do in the nearby area, and gave them directions, including a map. Later we found out they had got lost and didn’t find many of the places we had talked to them about.

From then on, we became their personal tour guides. Luckily we had no other guests 😊. We took them out of the city to a large temple, Sanzen-in, famous for it’s moss gardens (among other things) and then to one of my favourite temples, Kurama-dera, stopping for lunch at a favourite restaurant, Yoshuji, for lunch. That night we went into town to go to a shop that has interesting Japanese style clothing and have dinner, neither of which went exactly to plan. We tried to get into four restaurants that serve vegan food and all were either closed, booked out or there was a long queue waiting outside. In the end we decided to go to an old favourite, Engine Ramen and, yes, there was a longish queue waiting outside there too, but we stuck it out.

Snow on the ground still

We took the cable car

Before and after at Yoshuji

After around 40 minutes we were finally seated and they loved the ramen (thankfully). They decided to tell one of the staff (who happens to be one of the owners and knows us from previous visits) that it was Craig’s birthday, resulting in a free drink for him, a sample tasting of another sake for all of us, a sample plate of gyoza (which they are going to re-introduce on the menu) and a small bowl of vegan ice-cream (which was amazing). It seems the ice-cream is also going to be added to the menu. After all this, they sang Happy Birthday. It ended up being a fantastic night.

The next day we took them to Kinkakuji, which we hadn’t been to for quite a few years (it looked amazing, having recently had the gold leaf renewed), and then to Kitano Tenmangu to see the plum blossom. This too we hadn’t done for a while and discovered they had built a viewing platform, at tree top height, which was a real highlight. After this, Craig dropped us off at a vegan restaurant, Café Ren, which was just about to close but they kindly allowed us to have lunch. Craig had to return home to do some prep for next morning’s breakfast. After we ordered our guests decided to get some take-away for Craig, which Craig enjoyed later. That night we cooked them another pre-arranged dinner, their last dinner here.

What’s in the box?

A vegan take on eel… I just had to try it, and it was nice!

We did enjoy looking after them, though a little exhausting. They paid for everything, including some money for petrol, on top of staying in the big room. They told us that this was their first stop on a nine-week holiday, a sort of spiritual journey with Joe taking his relatively new wife to places he had been to in the past (he was in Japan in the 1970s conducting tennis clinics) and to some new places. They really were lovely people and they have invited us to visit them in Texas (a number of times throughout their stay). Not sure how (six cats), or when that could happen…

Before I sign-off, there are just two things more to mention – the first being the great missing shoe mystery. Yes, one of my outside/garden shoes mysteriously disappeared late in February. These shoes are my winter outside shoes, which have fairly thick rubber soles and are lined with fur (fake, of course). Very comfortable, very warm, quite heavy (the rubber) and had only been worn a few times. We have looked around the garden, but there is no sign of it. So, who is the culprit, where did it go and what was the purpose??? Bedding? We have no idea.

The second item is something I saw on-line here a while ago – T-rex racing. People dress in T-rex costumes and undertake a series of races, to find the fastest of them all, and to have a lot of fun. It looks hilarious to watch. I imagine it happens elsewhere in the world, but it definitely is the kind of whimsy Japanese people love.

That’s all for now.

Cheers!

My latest Ikebana attempt

Our magnolia’s first flowering

That kokeshi doll turns up again!

Can’t resist some more jizou…

How you protect trees from damage via snowfall

Signs – don’t those entrails sound good? What’s a Croossing? And who knew t-shirts had that power?

Corners – it’s another opportunity to decorate

Sunset

After sunset – and the power of three!

Hi all, it’s that time again, so here I am reflecting on the past month and just how accurate my weather predictions turn out to be. The answer to that is, well, rubbish. I have to say, though, that I did make a bit of a bet with our neighbour friend when she was complaining that there hadn’t been any snow and she really wanted some snow, that if I said that there wasn’t likely to be any snow, then almost certainly there would be. To take this further, if I said that there definitely wouldn’t be any significant snow, you had better prepare your snow shovels.

Et voila, we not only had quite a few days of snow, but there was a fairly heavy fall on the first night it started snowing. Thankyou very much Helen! The snow started falling on the 24^th of January and kept going most of the night, so that we had quite a build up by the morning (over 15cm). Usually by the end of the day most of the snow has melted and that is that, however, it was so cold that this did not occur (though there was a little melt) and on top of this it kept snowing on and off for the next few days.

The 24th

From my tablet (didn’t photograph too well…) early on the 25th showing the temperature outside

Early morning through the closed window on the 25th

The 25th

Our guest’s footprints from the night before on the 25th

Our street the night before and around lunchtime on the 25th

26th

27th

28th

As snow newbies, our experience of what it is like to have snow for a few days and the actual consequences of this was quite minimal. What actually happened over these days is that there would be a little bit of melt, then re-freezing, which meant that there was a gradual build up of ice in places, especially on the roofs. On the 27^th Craig and I were in the dining room, cleaning up after breakfast service when we suddenly heard a rumble and then a very loud noise, including a banging sound – some of the snow and ice from the front of our roof had fallen down and landed on the carport (as well as the ground). The carport shook quite a bit, and it scared the $#@% out of us.

After the first fall

After the third fall, near our entrance

At first we didn’t realise exactly what had happened, then it dawned on us, the snow on the roof. About 10 minutes later it happened again – the movement of the carport both times was very concerning, but it came through ok. At this point we thought we should try to assess how much was still up there and whether there was any risk of something bad happening. The good news was that it appeared most, if not all of the snow from the front of the roof had now fallen down (so no more hits to the carport). The not so good news was that there was a hell of a lot more up there on the west side of the roof, and none of the snow had yet left the roof on the east side.

The signs were around that it was gradually slipping off, but we just didn’t notice at first

Over the next few days it all gradually came down, although there was another reasonable size fall of snow on the night of the 27^th and it continued off and on through the 28^th. So, every now and then you would hear a whoomp and another pile of snow and ice would hit the ground (scared the hell out of the cats!). Essentially it meant we had to be very careful if we went outside, because it would not be a good thing to have that much snow and ice fall on you. The other issue was that our roof slightly overhangs the big shed next door to us, and it isn’t the strongest of structures, especially since the typhoon went through five years ago (they haven’t done any repairs…), so we just crossed our fingers about that, because there was nothing we could really do about it.

There were many pieces of ice like this (at least 5mm thick). It just kept coming down!

Tanuki was blinded and Pan in snow costume

We have had some more snow here recently, though not as much, and the weather has been seesawing between sub-zero and into the teens since the first fall. We even had one day of 17C recently – though when we went out on Thursday night it was cold, cold enough that even my ears felt it.

During January we had quite a few guests coming and going, which was a surprise given it’s winter, though most pleasant. While all of the snow was happening, we had a few guests staying with us, which was interesting for us and them. February has been very quiet guest-wise, with only one guest staying here, so far. This is giving us time to make necessary preparations for the upcoming spring peak period. At the moment we are basically full for at least three weeks starting on the 24^th of March. Hopefully we will continue to have guests coming through regularly, though I have to admit it’s nice to have the occasional small gaps 😊.

Moving on to other things that we have been doing; on the 25^th of January we again celebrated Burns Night. This time, rather than substituting haggis chips for the main menu item, I actually bit the bullet and made a vegan haggis. It turns out that the Scots are becoming quite flexible about this and at many of the festivities they are offering both the traditional (offal) version and a veg version (vegetarian or vegan). This being the case, it was easy to find recipes and I chose one from a website of a Scottish cook. He also provided a recipe for a whisky cream to go with the haggis and vegetables (no neeps here, though). It was all very tasty and I look forward to trying it again next year!!

The essentials – plaid, whisky and haggis

We did go a bit heavy on the whisky cream!!!

The next major event of the year, after Burns Night, is Setsubun, which is the day before the beginning of spring in the old lunar Japanese calendar. This is the day a number of rituals are performed and traditions are upheld all aimed at driving away any bad fortunes and evil spirits from the previous year, to start afresh for the year to come. We have been performing some of the rituals each year, such as throwing soy beans out of the main doors and shouting Devils out! Fortune in! (in Japanese of course). The remainder of the roasted soy beans are divided between us based on our age +1, which we then eat. Soy beans traditionally were believed to have sacred power, hence throwing them outside to get rid of evil spirits and eating them for good health.

We also went to Heian Jingu to watch the festivities and after went to a Japanese style bar (izakaya) for dinner, which had been recommended by one of our guests. An izakaya is a relaxed place to go to drink and have some food, usually consisting of fried meat items. The place we went to is called Saishuan, which essentially is a mash up of Japanese words for vegetables (or food), alcohol and a retreat. It was a lovely place, very neat and clean and run by a woman who was a real character, and could speak some English. She had a section on the menu for vegan dishes and they were very good. We had a fun night, with good food, sake, beer and good company. The customers present ended up being pretty even in numbers Japanese and tourists – and us. I look forward to going there again!!!

The izakaya hidden down a lane!

Ready

One other ‘big’ outing we had was a visit to the Hosomi art gallery, which is a private gallery based around the extensive collection of a wealthy industrialist from Osaka, Hosomi Ryo (1901-1979). They hold regular exhibitions at the gallery, rather than having a permanent exhibition. It is a great place to visit to see traditional Japanese paintings and crafts, and I particularly like the fact there are many Jakuchu works in the collection – one of my favourite Japanese artists. This time they had one of his paintings of a rooster in the exhibition, so I was able to get a print in the form of a shikishi, which is currently holding pride of place in the entry area of our ryokan.

After we left the gallery, we dropped in to a restaurant called Zirael, run by a Russian woman and her Japanese/Taiwanese husband. We had met them last year at one of the vegan festivals and wanted to visit their establishment, not least because they have piroshki on the menu 😊. When we got there we discovered that Anna had given birth to their first child just two weeks before, so her husband was holding the fort until she is able to return to work (and he was only making one dish for sale each day – not piroshki…). Anyway, he was very, very excited to see us, in fact he was nearly doing a jig around the kitchen 😊. He kept looking at us every now and then as he was preparing our lunch and giggling (literally). We also discovered that they had found a new place to live, a bigger place, and it just happens to be in the same area we live in! So, we will be catching up with them in the nearish future.

We have also visited one other restaurant close to us, which serves vegan Korean style food, in an effort to make sure we have a fairly good knowledge of what is around so that we can tell our guests about them. Most guests ask us for recommendations, so we are trying to get to as many places as possible (money permitting), especially since the landscape has changed quite a bit since ‘the difficulties’ began. We are also keeping an eye on the plum blossom to make sure we know where it is up to – luckily the temple near us (Chishakuin) has a good collection of plum trees so we can just drop by fairly quickly to have a look – and take photos!

Before I sign off, I have some sad news; the homeless man we have been giving regular food packages to has disappeared. All of his worldly items are gone from the place he has always inhabited and there is no sign of him nearby. The last time I dropped off a package, his bike wasn’t there, but most of his bedding was, although it was very dishevelled, as though he had left it suddenly. This was just after the heavy snow, so we don’t know if something has happened to him, or he has just found somewhere else to sleep. We went back after leaving the package, to check on him, and that’s when we found everything was gone. We have been back twice since, but there has been no sign of him.

So, that’s where we’re up to. Lots to come!

Cheers

Vale Burt Bacharach – thankyou for leaving us with the legacy of your music.

More snow photos!

Interesting things you see when walking around

Interesting things you see when out shopping. Don’t all shopping malls have pipe organs???

Sign for a trunk room (ie storage space)

Re-jigged ikebana – saving bits for re-use, hence saving money!

When you bring your Hellebore inside for winter and it decides to flower!

Our Camelia flowered a while ago

What? It’s January? What happened to December?

Hello everyone and Happy New Year! Yes, I did miss the December episode and, to be honest, while we did go out and do things, there were virtually no photographs to put in the blog because either we did not do anything photo-worthy, or we couldn’t take photos, such as when we went to see Kodo (the Japanese taiko group). This concert, by the way, was fantastic – both visually and musically – but the only photo I have is of the concert hall pre performance.

A quick note on the weather; winter started very cold with many days of sub-10C maxima, including one of 4C – no real snow, though. Since the second half of December we have had mostly double digit maxima, including a couple of days in the mid-teens recently. So, since we are now halfway through January, it doesn’t look very likely we are going to get any snow this year, and certainly not any significant falls like we had on the 21^st of January last year.

Other happenings during December included our 33^rd anniversary (31 years married), a walk with our friend Nacho and his partner into town and then dinner at Engine Ramen to celebrate Winter Solstice (although the walk was meant to be along the Kyoto trail, but inclement weather prevented that), and we had a last minute xmas lunch with Rachel and Dave, which only happened because I was talking to Dave via electronic means and he didn’t have anything planned, so I thought it would be nice to invite him here. Then Craig suggested we should also invite Rachel since she was also alone. All of this organising happened the day before xmas day…

We had two bookings late in December, including a couple who were here for new year’s eve, which meant we didn’t do much in the way of celebrating new year on the night. We did, however, undertake the ritual visit to a shrine in the first week of January (hatsumode – although we didn’t go on one of the first three days of the year, but made it there on the fourth). At the shrine you pay your respects to the kami (deities) and ask for what you would like for the new year. We went to the Ebisu shrine (the business deity) and I asked for a good year for our business (unsurprisingly). After this, we went to Engine Ramen.

On our way to the shrine we also stopped by the Kyoto Ceramic Centre to get our new ceramic animal figurine for the year, this year’s being a rabbit. The animals are known as eto here, and ceramic figurines of the year’s eto are generally displayed in businesses as well as some homes. Most of the generally available figurines are white ceramic, often painted with red and other colour highlights. Last year we discovered a range of cubist-like figurines in the ceramic centre and are now collecting them each year.

On the 7^th of January, we went to see an exhibition at the MOMAK (modern art) gallery featuring works from the Museum Ludwig Cologne. Amazing exhibition with a huge range of 20^th century art, mostly collected by Peter and Irene Ludwig. Artists included Picasso, Kandinsky, Ernst, Malevich and Lichtenstein. Loved it. After this tour de force, we went to try a new restaurant (new to us, that is), Bali-Bali Indonesia. Good selection of food, some of which is vegan. Yum – and we have already been back there again 😊.

All of these copies came from the internet

Last week, the annual Ebisu festival was held and we have also made it a ritual to go to this every year, since it helps liven up January (which is normally cold and fairly uneventful) and we also have taken to buying a new shikishi from the lovely lady who runs a shop selling mainly shikishi and paraphernalia on the street where the festival is held. I was looking for one that was wintry, perhaps with pines and snow, but there wasn’t a suitable picture, so I ended up buying one with lovely purple iris. Not at all wintry, really. We also had our usual samosas at a stall which has been there every year, run by Indian people who live in Kobe now.

Prior to going to the festival, we went to an Andy Warhol exhibition at the Kyoto City Kyocera Museum of Art (long name…). A second exhibition visit with a week?! Well, during the recent Difficulties period, all galleries and museums were closed for quite a while, so with them open again and some exhibitions which we are interested in seeing, it’s a matter of carpe diem. I wasn’t exactly sure what was going to be there, I assumed there would be soup cans and boxes, but it was so much more than that. In fact, I think I enjoyed it even more than the Ludwig exhibition!

Last year we watched a documentary series about Andy, so we had learnt quite a bit about his life, but I wanted to see more of his art, and it also happened that he had come to Japan, twice (in 1956 and in 1974), which we didn’t know. So the exhibition gave us a chance to look at a chronology of his works and the Japanese curation also added a focus on his visits here. Amazingly, we were able to take photos of anything we wanted to, the only restriction was in relation to videos. So, we took quite a few photos.

One of the best parts of the exhibit was a room installation which had some of his silver cloud pillows floating around (there were fans) and the walls were used to project both photos and shapes and colours on them. This was fantastic fun and gave us an opportunity to interact with the works, making our own ‘art’ to photograph. Others were doing likewise. I enjoyed this as much as I have any Yayoi Kusama installations.

On the more business side of our lives, we are getting a lot (quite a lot) of bookings at the moment, mostly for late March and April. As of today, the first two weeks of April are pretty much a full house!!! One change we have made this year is to list ourselves on Booking.com, which I said we never would but we found that most of my main concerns we could work around. So, while most of our bookings are coming via our website, we are getting some from Booking.com. In fact, the longest booking now sitting on our books came via them – a 12 night stay starting late March!

Hopefully, all of this will help Immigration see us in a more positive light and they will renew our visas for three years when they come due this year.

That’s all for now. Burns night is coming up on the 25^th, so get out your clan colours!

Cheers!!!

Also traditional new year here – the Kabuki special January performances (and I still haven’t made it to one yet)

Inside the renovated art gallery

These two factories have always reminded me of a Jeffrey Smart painting, so just had to take it eventually…

…but then that set me on a sort of  industrial bent.

Still not sure what this means…

Things you see while walking

My latest effort (with acknowledgment to Craig for perspective)

Blossom!!!

Mum and the kids (who are now bigger than her). Zara is always on the move, so hard to get unblurred photos of her.

Recently we ‘inherited’ a cat tower (long story). The first shot is about one minute after Craig brought it in.

Interesting sake label at Engine Ramen

Well, better late than never?

Well, they say better late than never but I do have to apologise for my tardiness, it has just been a matter of timing. During late October and early November I was resting my foot as much as I could, so that I could do a lot more walking when our friends (Jenny & Paul) arrived later in November. It was difficult, especially when the weather was good, but necessary, really. I bought a good quality foot brace and wore it as much as possible, even at night sometimes if it was aching. Hence, there really wasn’t much to write about.

We did, however, go to a vegan fair on the 12^th of November because we thought it was important to be seen and see others at events like this. As it happened, this event was a bit larger than the one in October and there were more people there that we knew. We also made some new contacts, which we will follow-up in the near future. It was a lovely day weather-wise and there was a much better range of food there, so, all-in-all very worthwhile.

Speaking of the weather, there isn’t overly much to say except it has been mostly in the mid teens up to 20C recently, and this Thursday, yes the first day of December, the expected maximum is 10C!!! A sudden hit of cold, still it is that time of year so it has to happen sooner or later. We have had the under floor heating on recently and the kittens (Zara and Akashi) have learnt the joys of lying on a warm floor.

We also took one longer walk before Jenny and Paul arrived, to test out my foot and to see how the Autumn colour was going. We walked past Tofukuji, one of the better Autumn colour vistas and on to Fushimi-Inari. The colour was right on schedule (our schedule, that is 😊) and my foot did pretty well, so a good walk!

One other thing to mention – we have had a few guests through since my last post, which has been fantastic. We are getting back into to the swing of the whole process of having guests here, and I have re-commenced my Ikebana practice. While mum and the kittens were still in the dining room I couldn’t have anything in the room that was breakable or slightly edible, so flowers were out. Now, with guests here, we are keeping them out unless we are in there ourselves. They are curious about the guests, and are having small peeks at them, but they are yet to be brave enough to say hello – which Zowie always wants to do.

While Jenny and Paul were here we did a lot of sightseeing and eating out. On the first day we went in to see Sanjusangendo, which I hadn’t been into for years. As it happened, there was a ceremony taking place in the garden area of the temple involving a bonfire, which was an added bonus. That night we went for a walk around the Kiyomizu dera area for the Autumn light-up, when the back streets are lined with lanterns and both Kiyomizu dera and Kodaiji are lit up for the Autumn colour. The plan was to have a look at them, but it was so crowded that we decided not to go into Kiyomiz, and the queue to get into Kodaiji had many hundreds of people waiting in it! So, we went to get some food and ended up at Engine Ramen, which is always a good thing, even though there was a bit of queue when we got there.

The next day we ended up going to lunch first, then walking the Philosopher’s Path and culminating at Eikando, the best place to see Autumn colour in Kyoto (in my humble opinion). Towards the end of the Path, we came across a man in an interesting hat sketching the canal. He had some previous sketches on display for sale, and they were fantastic. We both bought a print which, interestingly, turned out to be the same one, though it was hard to choose because they were all very good. Eikando was beautiful, as usual, and worth every yen of the entry fee – I’ll let the photos do the talking here…

Along the Path

The photographer’s face is hidden to protect her identity…😂

This is the man who makes the little leaf and flower boat that you drop into the canal. It seems he is always there!

The artist was just sitting there…

Eikando

How to follow this up the next day? We went to Kameoka and took the Hozugawa river boats back to Arashiyama. I think this was our third time in the boats, and I have to say it seems to have changed a bit since our last voyage before the pandemic. Perhaps they had some spare time during this period, because it seemed the route had changed slightly and there were a few more ‘rapids’ to pass through. The river had been slightly ‘engineered’ initially for the rides, so it is not unreasonable to change it subsequently, though it was a bit more ‘bumpy’ in spots, ie we hit a few more rocks than previously. It may be that the river was lower as well. Anyway, it was still enjoyable! After this we walked around a bit in Arashiyama and then had a late-ish lunch.

This is the first time we have ever seen a monkey down near the river!

They suggested we turn our cameras backwards…

Knowing that Wednesday was going to be rainy, we decided to take the train to Osaka and visit the castle. Interestingly, the displays inside the castle had also been added to, with more information about the history of the castle and another model showing the castle area as it was during Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s time. When we arrived back at the subway station near our home, I noticed there was a thunderstorm advisory. I mentioned this and also said that these warnings rarely come to anything…Challenge accepted by the weather gods, and as we were about halfway home from the station, there was a flash. The next flash was a bolt accompanied by thunder, ie it was a direct hit just down the road from us. We started walking faster and the rain intensified. We were still a few hundred metres from home when it really started pelting down. By the time we got home, even having had umbrellas, my jeans were wet nearly all the way up, my shoes were squelchy, my glasses were covered in water and my backpack was quite wet. So we went inside, dried off, changed clothes and drank whisky!

Following that episode, the next day was sunny and dry – thank goodness. Taking advantage of this, we went to Heian Jingu to wander around the lovely garden there, then followed this up with a visit to the Kyoto Craft Museum (where there had also been significant changes made). After, we took a lovely stroll along the canal road back towards the Gion area, checked out some antique stores and ended up at Menkui Kinya for lunch. While we had to wait in a queue here too, it again was worth it.

How often we find a wedding photos scene here!

On their last full day here, our friends opted to go to the antiques market held once a month at the Kitano Tenmangu shrine. It was crowded and there were as many stalls as there were pre-pandemic, so there was a huge amount of items for sale to look at. We all came away with some finds and then ended up on a very over-crowded bus headed to lunch and, subsequently, Nijojo.

We walked a lot, ate a lot (well for me, anyway) and drank some fine single malts and gin. Truly lovely and wonderful to have friends here in the flesh (so to speak). I should note that it was my actual six year anniversary of arriving here on the 25^th. So I am now into my 7^th year here. How time flies, especially when the world is enveloped in a pandemic.

Just to finish up, I thought I would leave you with some photos of the twin terrorists when they are sleeping, and yet another truly weird tv show titled “The wonderful world of living things! Amazing plant sensation.”…

Cheers!!!

I wanted to get an aerial view, but Craig didn’t think it was a good idea…

Faburous Falafel?

At the division point Craig became the 1 in charge, and we were The Others…

So, alcohol-free beer is actually alcohol?

Not sure what this is, maybe an alien lurking around?

Lovely canal turkey, who started following us until I took this photo

Part of a huge art work

Is this like hanging out the Kendo washing?

Having fun

Well hello there! I am coming to you from a somewhat changed Kyoto, indeed Japan, a place where tourists can come and go as they please. Yes, certain areas are becoming more crowded, but it is for the best. We currently have one guest for two nights, and we have a couple staying here next weekend for three nights. So it is already bringing us some business, which makes us happy.

Weather-wise, there has also been a sudden change, with the temperatures dropping from the low 30s into the mid to low 20s, with a few days peaking in the sub-20s. This means the colouring is beginning, starting with the Dogwood trees, and there is even a little colour starting on our Japanese maple. Hopefully it will happen fairly slowly, to give us time to enjoy it more. Anyway, it is nice not to have to use the air-cons for a while and to have the windows open.

Also, when the weather is pleasant, it just makes me feel like going for long walks and so we have taken two long walks. One of these was to go and lodge our room tax paperwork (yes, there is no on-line system, you literally have to fill out a piece of paper and either post it or deliver it personally to the office in town), and the other took us to a vegan festival at Okazaki park.

From our home to the room tax office it is about 4.3km, which takes around 50 minutes, and it was a lovely day. We zig zagged through shrines and along the famous Hanamikoji road, which we discovered, to our horror, has had asphalt laid on it. It used to be paved along its entirety, but not any more. Why? Who knows, but it has lost quite a lot of its charm in the process. After we had delivered our piece of paper, we went to Mumokuteki for lunch (a huge lunch at that), and then walked home (which helped me digest all that food 😊).

Yes it was red spider lily time…

Mine

Craig’s

Our other walk was a little shorter, given that Okazaki park is around 3.3km from home, although we did take a slight detour getting there to drop off some rice to a homeless man that Lilia (our Israeli friend who recently left Japan) used to give rice to fairly regularly. His name is Kasagawa-san, and he lives next to one of the canals near Okazaki park. Of course having given him one lot of rice, and knowing he has no income, I sort of feel like I have to continue to help him, especially with winter looming…

So, on to Okazaki park for the festival, though it was more a lunch fair with not overly many stalls and most of them just selling food for immediate consumption. Prior to The Virus, the festivals used to be quite large and there were a variety of stalls, still it was interesting to see what was available. We tried some Sudanese eggplant salad, which we had never had before (never even heard of before, really) and it was was very nice. Once we had finished trying various foods, we walked home along one of my favourite streets, the one that meanders along the side of a canal and is lined by willow trees, which I love.

Kakigori machine and the resultant matcha kakigori

Random shots…

I noticed the geiko, but I didn’t want to be too obvious, so a photo of Craig and others…

We did take one other walk into town, which is a shorter distance, but returned home by bus as I have recently hurt my foot and it had started to hurt a bit (ok, I was noticeably limping). While we were in town, we found a new sign which had been highlighted in a recent news story, which is aimed directly at taxi drivers who stop illegally to pick up and drop off fares at a particularly busy intersection. Basically, the sign is a double sided board with a window in it through which you can see the corner in question.

On one side it essentially says that the taxi you can see through the window is stopped illegally and that there is a taxi stand just one minute’s walk away. On the other side it has a pair of eyes and says “Driver-san, you are stopped illegally and everyone can see you”. The aim, of course is to shame the driver into not stopping there and to remind people to go to the taxi stand to hail taxis. Only in Kyoto 😊.

Speaking of only in Kyoto, there was another story in the same paper about a large bamboo shoot which had been placed on the footpath in the Gion area in substitution for a witches hat cone. The story goes that the owner restaurant where the bamboo shoot was placed had been given the shoot and decided to put it out front of the restaurant while the restaurant was being renovated. He even named the shoot – Takenokone – a mashup of the Japanese word for bamboo shoot (takeno) and the word cone, but using a k since there is no c in the Japanese language.

It stood there until it naturally shrivelled and died, at which point the owner put back the witches hat, placed the outer skin of the bamboo shoot on top of it and added a funerary style note which said “Takenokone-sama achieved great things while working admirably as the Takenokone, and was loved by many in its life,” as well as including a death poem. It also noted a posthumous name, which had been conveyed upon it, Mosoin Suzume Homare Asa Hori Takebayashi Koji, with the Takebayashi portion meaning ‘bamboo forest’. There was also a photo of Takenokone, which is traditional for death notices. The owner said he initially put the shoot on the footpath just to brighten up people’s days 😊.

During this last month, apart from taking some long walks, we have spent an unusual amount of time at two different Vet surgeries. The first visit was for the two female kittens to have their ‘special’ operation, which they were definitely not happy about. While the surgeries went well, the next day one of the girls, Akashi – the smallest of the kittens, was not well. She was sweating and shaking, so we packed her up and took her fairly hurriedly to our usual Vet surgery (we had been using a different Vet for all the visits for the mum and kids because he is used to dealing with street cats and is a lot cheaper than most other Vets (he kindly discounts the costs for people helping street cats).

The Vet we saw at our usual surgery said her symptoms were due to her being in pain and prescribed some painkillers, as well as some antibiotics, just in case. None of the other kittens, nor mum had experienced pain like this, and the streetcat Vet never offered painkillers, although the Vet we saw for Akashi said they always send cats home with enough painkillers for three days. I was definitely relieved by her diagnosis, because I was worried Akashi may be bleeding.

Ziggy also visited the Vet, twice. The first visit was his regular three monthly check for his urinary condition. In a turn of events this time the Vet discovered that Ziggy has become diabetic. So we are now injecting him with insulin twice daily. The other visit was another emergency visit, after I discovered him straining to urinate and the urine was bloody. Luckily the Vet who runs the surgery happened to be there, because he can speak some English, and he was able to let us know it was an infection which is fairly common in cats, especially during seasonal change.

He was shocked, though, to find out Ziggy was also now a diabetic and he asked us to return when both he and the usual Vet we see for Ziggy are there, to discuss Ziggy’s issues. Again, a relief in knowing it was not too bad, but it means we are giving him four tablets every night for ten days to deal with this.

In other cat news, Buchi has found a new home in Yokohama, which was quite bittersweet as we have become quite attached to all of them. It was also quite stressful as Buchi did not cope well with this move for the first few days, with him refusing to eat and drink for two days, and then mewling and eating only a little after that. We spent quite a bit of time messaging with the woman who took him…

We miss him

On a final, purely for interest, note the number of centenarians in Japan has now risen to over 90,000! When I first moved here, nearly six years ago, there were around 63,000. I wonder how much higher this will get?

That’s all for now

Cheers

Ah, the month (+) of Halloween

Also, it is my birthday month

A fabulous fresh fig feast and pumpkin spice cupcake

Help me!!!!

Please?

This is what happens when two guys try to create their own marketing…and their product? Vegetable pickles

This year’s big mama winner

Bikes, trucks, dinosaurs…

The sky’s on fire!

More cloud photos

There has to be some flower photos

One thing I forgot to mention, we have discovered a tempura and udon restaurant (Menkui Kinya) which has a vegan section of the menu. Vegan tempura – yum! Our second visit, and we will return.