First, they brought us The Earthquake (and the natural sequel: The Aftershocks). Then they brought us The Rain (with the follow-ups: The Floods and The Landslides). Now they bring us The Heatwave – the hottest epic of them all! Also the longest, as we are now coming up to two weeks of continuous heat with all days recording maxima in excess of 35C – and there doesn’t seem to be any end in sight, with at least the next seven days showing expected maxima of 35C+.

Kyoto has been one of the hottest places in Japan, although we haven’t reached 40C, as some places in nearby Gifu prefecture have. The hottest day in Kyoto, to date, was last Thursday when the temperature reached 39.8C, which is the highest temperature ever recorded in Kyoto (there was one other day in the 90s, I think, which also had a recorded maximum of 39.8C). In fact, during this period, we had seven days in excess of 38C – yesterday was the first day under 38C, at 37.7C.

As you can imagine, there have been quite a few heatstroke related deaths, with mostly the young and elderly being affected. There have also been thousands of hospital admissions across the heat affected areas of Japan. There has been one group of people who have been particularly affected; men in their 80s. A number have been found unconscious in their fields, or gardens, who subsequently died. There are also those who have refused to use air conditioners and who have succumbed to the heat.

So, nature really has been throwing everything at us over the last two months. Western Japan has been particularly hard hit, with the clean up from the floods and landslides continuing, and during this extreme heat. The only thing that has made it slightly easier to bear is that it is not as humid as it would normally be this month. Ironically, after all the rain we had recently, we are now having to water our plants every day.

Despite the heat, we are still having to go out on occasion to purchase food, etc. Along with my parasol, we are both taking fans with us and Craig has now bought a hat! We also decided to have two outings which were mainly for interest, despite the heat (both days were during the period of heat over 38C). Call us crazy, and at times I did think that maybe we had been a little crazy to go out, but in the end it was worth it just to get out for a while and see the sights.

This month is Gion Matsuri month, during which various events are held, including two parades of the yama (the smaller floats) and the hoko (the big floats – up to 25 metres tall and up to 11 tonnes). During the three days preceding each of the the parades, the yama and hoko are displayed in the streets near the centre of town. While they are on display, some of the floats can be entered by tourists and stalls are set up in the areas nearby which have some interesting items. After 6pm the streets are closed off to traffic around the floats and the whole area becomes a huge outdoor food and drink fest.

Our first outing was to see some of the floats and to buy a new chimaki, a traditional good luck charm related to the Gion Matsuri. Chimaki are generally hung above the front door, and are considered to bring good luck, prosperity and a long, healthy life. I wanted to get one for our new abode, because they really are part of the local landscape and a little bit of good luck for our business won’t go astray!

We wandered around the floats for a short while, bought a chimaki and then went into a store which specialises in yukata, kimono and obi. I wanted to buy a pre-tied obi and thought this shop may be a good bet. There is a local matsuri coming up where it is traditional to wear yukata for the occasion, and the last time I wore a yukata it was very difficult tying the obi, so I thought I’d take the easy way 😊. Anyway, I found what I wanted and while we were there Craig took the opportunity to look at what they had for men. We found one yukata which had bats on it – so, we just had to get it!!!

Coincidentally, as it happens, a few days later the nice lady who lives in the flats next door and who can speak some English came to our front door with a gift for us. One of her friends had been in the parade – one of the musicians playing flute in the front hoko float, and he had given her some things from the festival. These included a couple of chimaki. So, she decided to give us one of these chimaki for our minshuku front door. So now we have one above our minshuku front door and one on our private entrance door (there wasn’t any way to put it above the door).

 Our door

While it was a fruitful outing, it was hot, so we decided not to go to the first of the parades, instead choosing to sit in the air conditioned comfort of our home and watch it live on tv. It was very interesting seeing the parade this way because you actually got to see more of the whole procession, along with the rituals, and up close. I took some photos from tv, although while they do show some detail you can’t see from one place in the crowd, they are not as clear as being there.

The other benefit of watching the parade on tv was getting some of the history of the event, including some photos from the early 1900s. The floats have not changed much over time, just the landscape around the parades. My favourite photo is the one where you can see some boys viewing the parade from the absolute safety of a power pole and the wires…

The other outing was to a craft market which is held on the 15th of every month at the Chionji temple. There are handmade arts, crafts and foods sold from over 150 stalls, with most of the stalls run by the people who make the wares. There was a wide variety of items, although some classes of items were more common, such as jewellery and pottery. It was one of those places where it would be very easy to spend quite a bit of money…but due to the heat, we didn’t linger overly long; we used this first visit as more of a reccy. I really do love markets and Kyoto has a few very good ones.

(all photos sourced from the internet, our phones died too quickly in the heat)

After we left the market, we decided to find somewhere to sit down, have a drink and cool down. As it happens there is a falafel café in that area, so we thought we would try it out. The food was very nice, although it took quite a while for it to get to us. We had ordered falafel with baba ganoush and wondered if they had to make that on the spot, given it is not a well known food here. Anyway, we needed quite a bit of time to get our core temperatures down, so it wasn’t an issue.

Well, that’s it for this episode.

Cheers!

one of the rituals – presenting the papers for the float to a Shinto priest. The rope had to be undone and done up using a folded fan. I wonder how long they have to practice???

dancing on bitumen in 35C heat…hhhmmmm

one of the puppets on the floats being manipulated

the front of a boat shaped float which is the last float of the parade

examples of decorations for a yama float

One of my hydrangeas which seems to be enjoying the heat!? It has doubled in size in the last two weeks and looks like flowering again…

So, I start talking about rain and also the final (we hoped) aftershocks, and in response it seems the environment takes it as a challenge…

Hi all, I am writing a post now even though there isn’t that much to cover, mainly because we have had a few people asking if we are ok because they have heard of the recent floods here. Firstly, yes, we are fine, although we are starting to wonder if we really are being tested to see how we cope with as many natural forces as can be thrown at us.

The rain started on Monday, but really hit it’s straps on Thursday, with 171mm recorded in Kyoto. Late that night, just before midnight, we received a WhatsApp message from our builder’s interpreter that an evacuation order had been sent out for our area. In fact, it had been sent out for a large part of Higashiyama and Fushimi on our side of the hills and on the other side of the hills, including where the interpreter lives, ie a large part of the areas along the foothills in the east. The problem was that the recent earthquakes could have loosened the soil along the hills, then adding the rain on top of that was causing a very high risk of landslide.

Hard to think about evacuating in the middle of the night! Anyway, we did a general reccy, including checking whether any of our neighbours had made any moves, and came to the conclusion we would stay put. Part of our reasoning included the fact that the evacuation centre is around 100 metres away from our house (which we assumed must be safe enough otherwise they wouldn’t send us there), also there are about six buildings between us and the undeveloped, natural parts of the hills, including a two storey concrete built block of flats next door.

The next day around 111 mm of rain fell, with the following day about 70mm. We did consider that the risk must be increasing as more heavy rain fell, so we checked with a nearby neighbour who speaks English about his thoughts re evacuating. He said he was a bit unsure too and would check with others. Later he replied indicating that one of the neighbours that had come to brunch with us had gone to the evacuation centre to check what was happening there and found that only 24 people had spent the night.

I have to say that if our home was right next to the natural areas, my decision making would have resulted in a different action. Ultimately, to date, nothing significant has happened here – we did find that part of the shrine at Tofukuji had collapsed, but that was quite minor. The story has been very different in other areas, particularly Hiroshima prefecture. Landslides seem to happen there every year, but it has been reported that this year has been the worst in decades. Overall, the death toll from landslides and flooding has reached over 100 people so far.

On Sunday we awoke to a lovely blue sky and felt much relieved. It also meant that we could finally go back to Tofukuji to see how the lotus pond was going. We decided not to walk the back way there, via the hills!! Interestingly, as soon as the rain stopped the hot and humid weather returned immediately. So, instead of walking and being drenched in rain (as we did one of the days because we had to get supplies, ie food and drink), we went back to walking puddles. On one of the wet days that we went out, we took a slight detour to see the Kamo river, because we had see it how t looked as it was very high on tv.

The shinkansen stationary on the bridge!

 From the internet

The water had risen so much it was over the walkways along the edge of the river, which are normally well above water level. One woman said that she had lived near the Kamo for over 30 years and had never seen it as high. The other river in Kyoto which had risen dramatically was the river that passes through the Arashiyama area. The footage on tv showed that the bridge there had been closed to both traffic and pedestrians, and in fact it had burst it’s banks within the popular tourist area.

 From the internet

After we came home from Tofukuji we pottered around the house, eat lunch and planted the nandina we had bought (because we had been told that it is a plant that is considered as somewhat of a ‘good neighbour’ plant). It is considered a lucky plant and is generally planted in the south west corner of the house. As we were cleaning up, there was a sudden loud rattling and rumbling noise…Yes, another earth tremor, eleven days after the last one, and after me saying they seemed to be over, it happened again. I only hope it doesn’t add to the likelihood of landslide in the next few days.

In relation to our Tofukuji visit, there were some flowers open – some past their best, some about to open and many, many more coming on. So, not quite the spectacle I had hoped for, but then I was most worried the massive amount of rain may have done significant damage. While we were taking photos a small blue Kingfisher flew threw and I was able to get a few shots of it, even though it was tiny. I also captured a tortoise and a couple of the dragonflies, so not too bad overall.

Well, that’s been our week; another testing time, but not unsurprising in a country that is fairly frequently beset by natural disasters.

Cheers for now!!!

Tiny mushrooms in the moss – my camera struggled to get them!

Hello all, tis me back at the keyboard again – a lot less shaken, although maybe still a bit stirred. It has now been around five days since the last aftershock (touch wood!), of which we ended up having around 11. There were two bigger ones, both unfortunately during the middle of the night. The first one I mentioned in my last post and happened on the night of the initial earthquake. The second happened over a week later – it was a different kind of quake, being more of a big shunt with some upward movement, rather like something very big had run into the front of our home. All the others were more ‘rattlers’.

I should also say that even though what I wrote last time sounded like Craig was doing an “every man for himself’” run for the back door, he wasn’t, he was just looking around to see what was happening and making sure there was a clear egress. We have all now settled down more, with the kids mostly back to normal (no more big saucer eyes), although they are more affectionate than usual, seeking out comfort. As for myself, I find that I am still a bit oversensitive to rumbles, which we get a lot of here from the trains going through the nearby tunnels.

 Zowie relaxes

Moving on, firstly to the weather, we are now firmly into the summer ‘walking puddle’ heat and humidity. We have had a few thunderstorms in the last week (which makes me happy) and we are getting quite a lot of rain. On some days we are having more than the average rainfall for the whole month of June in Adelaide! The interesting thing is that we have already had a few days over 35, which is somewhat unusual here this early in summer. Other indicators of summer; the dragonflies are out and about and today we heard the first cicadas of the season.

 Dragonfly lands near me

One very positive aspect of the climate here is that plants grow very fast. We have managed to plant out quite a few vegetables and herbs, along with my fledgling hydrangea collection (two plants). Our first crop was sugar snap peas, which were lovely and we were able to use them to feed friends when they stayed earlier this year. Now we are cropping greens of various kinds, along with mint, thyme and shiso (perilla). The broken case that was left behind by one of our friends is working a treat as a veggie patch (thanks Jenny!!) and we have some large pots, some of which we brought from Adelaide (our pottery neighbours have been very interested in them – you don’t get many very large pots like them here). Last night Craig brought in some figs from the tree in the wall and this morning he brought in the first two cucumbers from our plant!

The other ‘hot’ topic is, of course, the #*$@&! Hotel licence. A few of you, dear readers, did ask what was happening about the licence, since I didn’t mention it last time. Well, I have to say it was somewhat deliberate, what with the seismic activities causing some tension, I didn’t want to raise my blood pressure even more by consciously thinking about it! Anyway (gritting teeth), previously we had had our not so BIG meeting with the neighbours and we had met with a commercial waste collector and we thought that we had fully satisfied everything we needed to for the final application. Not so.

We received an email on the Saturday night of the following week, saying we needed to have an actual contract signed with the waste collection company (even though we had been told providing the name of the company would be enough) and then we had to provide details of conversations with our near neighbours (within a 10 metre radius of our property, in all directions) and what their opinions of our business plans were (positive, complaints or no real opinion). As you can imagine, receiving this went down like a lead balloon, especially as we could do nothing to organise the preparation and signing of a contract until Monday morning, at the earliest. I think I went to around 200 over 150!!!!

On the Wednesday, we had the very nice woman and her small tip truck back here again, this time to formalise our agreement in a contract. Once that was completed, we walked around with Takako to try to talk to those close neighbours we hadn’t met or seen. The interesting thing was finding that someone actually did live in the house near our back yard, when we had never seen anyone go into or come out of the house. A youngish and very pallid man answered the door and didn’t really want to interact with us, however Takako managed to pique his interest enough, as he closed the door, that he came outside to see where our house was. Apparently he didn’t realise it was there, or what we were planning (which he didn’t really seem to care about). He appeared to me to be one of the increasing number of people, particularly young men here, who essentially cut themselves off from the world and remain a recluse in their own home – he wouldn’t give us his name. He really was very pale, with almost translucent white skin.

So, having done all this, we duly sent off an email with all the details needed and waited. And waited. We finally received an email some days later indicating the scrivener was going to submit the application as soon as possible, after he returned to Kyoto (from Tokyo). Late last week we finally received an email saying that the application had been submitted and that someone from the regulatory authority would be visiting our minshuku on the following Monday. Also, we had to put up a number of signs in each of the rooms and the ‘common’ area, which were written in English, Chinese and Korean, explaining how not to be a bad guest.

Obviously these signs had been created with Airbnb style accommodation in mind, because they referred to cooking and turning off gas stoves, not drying your clothes on heaters and appropriately disposing of your rubbish, etc. I’d be interested to see if the Four Seasons or the Hyatt have these signs up! Anyway, we did as we were told and yesterday a woman arrived on a pushbike (again – do all public servants have to use pushbikes to do their jobs???? especially in 35 degree heat with over 80% humidity!). She spent most of her time here measuring windows, doors, entryways etc in the rooms, other entryways and the size of our reception counter (there is a minimum size requirement…), to check the plans provided were accurate.

She then asked us if we knew any yakuza (!!!!) and we had to fill out a form with our names, DOB, and what position we held in the company (boss 😊), which Takako kindly did for us as I am very slow at writing kanji. We also had to provide two copies of our booking terms and conditions in English and two copies of instructions of how to get here from the railway station, in English. After all of this, she said we would get our approval in around 42 days…☹. The scrivener said this was fast and seemed pleased. I tried to look pleased.

We had two outings during this period, one was back to Tofukuji to see if the lotus flowers had opened yet and the other was to a temple at Ohara, which is about 45 minutes drive outside of the city, in the mountains. The lotus pond at Tofukuji is very large and occupies the area in front of the large Sanmon gate of the temple. We know that it is a fairly small window during which the lotus are open and I was very keen to see the pond when they were in full bloom. Alas, it was not to be – there was, in fact, one solitary lotus flower open, so I took a photo of that and we are now trying to decide when to return. Hopefully the rain will subside enough later this week, once typhoon number 7 has passed. I only hope that the very heavy rain (rain that periodically stops) due over the next three days won’t damage the flowers. There were a few lotus open on the plants in large pots placed around the temple site, so I did get a few shots of those.

Our other outing required a longish drive out along the river and into the mountainous area of Ohara. What a beautiful area it is; lush and green and rather idyllic, except it gets very cold in winter, with quite a bit of snow. The temple itself is located on the side of a hill and involves a reasonable amount of uphill and stair climbing, but it is definitely worth it. As with most Buddhist temples, there is an intricately designed contemplation garden, which is one of the best ‘green’ gardens I’ve seen and there is a very large wooded area, with part of it being a moss garden, with a pond and waterfall and the other part a huge hydrangea garden. Yes, another one.

This garden, however, is on a massive scale and having the hydrangeas in amongst the trees along with other plants is wonderful. It was another hot and humid day, even out there in the mountains, nonetheless, we absolutely loved it. There also were some quirky things there, like the stone carved heads appearing to pop out of the ground and small statues of monks and other people lining some of the pathways. In some of the areas I could just imagine the fey folk dwelling in amongst the trees and shrubs.

One of the roads leading to the temple was lined with small shops selling local wares and foodstuffs, which was a pleasure to walk along. Had I had some spare cash (something in short supply at the moment) there were many things that would have sorely tempted me. As it was we did buy a few small items, including a handkerchief sized piece of towelling, which is very useful during the mushi mushi months (walking puddle time). We are looking forward to returning to Sanzen-in and seeing it at other times of the year, particularly autumn.

Where are we going to go next? Who knows, but looks like we’ll have some time on our hands for a while!

Cheers

 Advanced Moss Studio?

 Oh, so we don’t float?

 Cairn building in Japan

 Tanuki family

 Golf playing Tanuki

Well, here I am sitting in front of the keyboard again, shaken, and somewhat stirred. Yes, I suppose it was going to happen sooner or later and it happened this morning just before 8am…an earthquake. It was centred around 30kms away from here and was quite shallow, which meant that, even though it wasn’t overly strong on the richter scale (5.5), the movement was strong. Luckily I had just finished my morning cup of tea, so my caffeine levels were up and I was able to get moving quite fast!!

My first thought was to get the cats to safety (because I knew Craig was already moving towards the back door), which for Serena and Ziggy wasn’t too difficult, since they are used to having harnesses on and their leads are set up outside (although Ziggy was somewhat panicked and hard to hold on to). Zowie was another issue – while we have a cat carrier, it was upstairs, in a locked cupboard. Thankfully it wasn’t too serious or too long, so it didn’t become an issue. We also realised we were underprepared for such an event and will have to put together an emergency box, just in case.

The house rode it out quite well and I noticed just before the shaking stopped the whole house moved underneath me which was unnerving but showed the rubber footing worked. The light in the kitchen was swinging freely and it could have meant that other things might have moved as much and taken a tumble, but not much did. All pictures remained on the walls, with some a little skewed; Gamera and another of my figurines took a tumble off the speakers; the fan took a fall; the metal cat in the window of the staircase area took a tumble; and the light fitting in room 1 was left askew.

We found out that our upper kitchen cupboards have a special locking device to stop them from opening in the event of an earthquake (discovered when we couldn’t open them after it had all finished…) and the gas automatically turns off at the meter box if an earthquake is over 5 in magnitude (which I found out when I went to have a shower an hour later and there was no hot water). Very much a learning experience. I also learned that the worst thing was not knowing how strong it was going to get and how long it would go (I suspect it was around 15 seconds). After it stopped, it was then a case of – was that a precursor…?

Moving backwards in time to the happier times of the week, we had some of our neighbours over for a brunch on Sunday, 10 June. There is no concept of brunch here, so it took a while to explain it, but they did enjoy the meal – a vegan brunch, of course. Before we ate, we showed them around the minshuku part of our home, which they really liked. They asked if we would have Japanese guests if they wanted to stay – which has been asked before and we have, of course, answered in the affirmative.

When we sat down to actually eat, the two women started picking up the chopstick rests (fish we had bought in Japan years ago) and looking them over. Turns out they were actually made by them!!! Three of our four guests work in the pottery behind our home (relatives of the owner, who live onsite) and they had fired them and hand painted them. They even found a slight defect on one of the fish, which was so small we had never noticed it. They seemed somewhat perturbed by this as they go through a very strict quality control before sale. Anyway, it seems we had bought homing fish, determined to return to where they came from 😊. We also had one other set of rests which they identified as theirs as well.

 Homing fish?

On Friday we went to the first of two festivals we attended this week. Known as the Aoba Matsuri, it was held at the large Buddhist temple closest to our home. It is held on the 15^th of June to commemorate the founder of Shingon Buddhism, Kōbō Daishi (Kukai, who I have previously mentioned), and to celebrate the return of those who have just finished weeks of shugendō training on Mt. Ōmine in Nara. Shugendō means ‘the way to spiritual power through discipline’ and involves the monks undertaking rituals of courage and hardship in nature to develop themselves, such as climbing overhanging rocks using only a chain, or dangling head first over a 60 metre cliff! If only I could be a part of that, because I so love to hang over the edges of cliffs, etc…

 Bonfire covered early on

The actual ceremony was slightly different to what we expected, which may have been due to the heavy rain that had been falling early in the day, but it was still great, with the culmination of all the rites being the lighting of a bonfire. The procession to the area where the fire was lit involved the head monk walking with his assistants past all of the monks who had been through shugendō, who were lining the way and blowing into conch shell trumpets. These trumpets were blown so as to hit three separate notes and were quite loud.

Prior to lighting the fire there were some Buddhist rites, undertaken by the head monk, and then some other rites involving a long handled axe, a small sword, some wooden blocks and a bow and arrows. The latter was knocked and shot at each of the four corners of the clearing (literally – arrows which had small rubber balls on the tips were actually shot off). Then the fire was lit, with much ceremony. I don’t know what was actually on the inside of the bonfire – the outside was covered in green pine cuttings – but it took off and became very hot with lots of smoke very quickly. They were both fanning the fire, with very large fans, and throwing water on it, perhaps to make sure it kept going long enough.

Once it was fully ablaze they threw on wooden blocks with wishes written on them and then the monks came over to the crowd and asked for items to take to the fire. I had no idea what they were going to do until one man handed over his carry bag and his hat, which they took over to the fire. My first thought was that it was something the man wanted thrown on the holy fire, but it turned out that the monk just waved it around in front of the fire while chanting. After that, everyone started handing over their bags, along with both Craig and I. So, we have now had our respective bags blessed by the monks using the holy fire (hopefully this will help move our licence application along!). It really was a spectacle and definitely worth going to – in fact I would go again if the opportunity arises.

On Sunday just past, we went to the Ajisai (Hydrangea) Matsuri at Fujinomori Jinja. The shrine has two large gardens filled with hydrangeas, which were beautiful to see, but the main reason we went there was because the taiko group we were considering joining was going to perform (it is their home shrine). (OMG, as I’m writing this a small aftershock just happened…)

Ok, so I’m back at the keyboard. I decided to give up following that aftershock yesterday, it was getting late and I decided to have a cooling (relaxing) beverage and check on the kids. It had been around 8½ hrs between the quakes, so the kids had relaxed and then when the aftershock happened it set them off again. Overnight we had five more aftershocks with the biggest at around 12:30 am. This one got us out of bed. Anyway, apart from Godzilla and one of his mates falling off the speakers, everything was ok, however this really scared the kids and Zowie went under the couch, where he stayed for the next 10 hours. Now, even the sound and rumble of the trains going through the tunnels is scaring him. Unfortunately, the aftermath of the first quake was four dead and a fair amount of damage. All of the people were killed by something falling on them, either a wall or a bookcase.

Returning to the matsuri, the first performance of the day was a Bugaku dance, which involves very slow and precise movements. To me, it is somewhat reminiscent of the movements in Noh performances. The dancers wear intricate traditional Buddhist costumes, which usually include equally beautiful masks. After this, there was a demonstration of traditional sword making, using a hand pumped bellows and fire pit – hard work!

Next, there was a Kemari ball game, the object of which is to keep a ball off the ground, with players kicking it so it stays in the air. They call out to let each other know who is going to kick it next, although that doesn’t always work! This game harks back to the middle of the 7^th century CE. The players here appeared to be Shinto priests (I recognised some of them) and they were wearing their traditional clothing, which appeared at times to make it a bit harder! It looked like fun, somewhat physical and it was fun to watch.

Finally, the taiko group played. We knew the songs they played from having been to a few of their rehearsals. It was a warm day and you could see they were getting quite hot – it was outside, although they were on a raised dais with a roof. Interestingly, despite my wish to play taiko here, seeing them perform made me realise that I would prefer to be with a group that had either a larger repertoire, or that changed what they played each year – and funnily enough, I realised I do enjoy a certain amount of improvisation!!!!

…and on that beat, it’s cheers for now!

 Me trying to blend in…

 Lotus flowers very soon!

Following my offer of assistance a glove arrives!!

A statue without pants (><)

Hi all, here I am again! While I haven’t got a huge amount to talk about right now, I thought I’d report back on the BIG meeting and our rubbish situation.

Firstly, the weather continues to remain warm, with the occasional day where the rain ‘periodically stops’. We also now have the first typhoon for the season heading towards us, although it is technically number 5 for the season. It appears it is going to weaken quite a bit before it sweeps up the east coast, so may not impact us much at all.

Now, onto the report, after that brief interlude. What a fizzer!!!! Of the possible 60 households in our community group, we had just two people attend the meeting – the chair of the community group and our neighbour from across the road! Having printed 30 copies of ye olde rules of the minshuku and the booking confirmation email (which has some details in it that we added about not making too much noise when arriving here after hours) and bought enough drinks and paper cups for 50 people, and being told about a terrible situation a few years ago when a minpaku was closed down due to complaints from our neighbours, it really was almost comical – except it was very serious.

Anyway, we stuck to the assigned agenda and went through our introductions (even though we had met both people before), gave answers for all of the questions posed by the chair in the meeting with our scrivener and, lastly, asked for any further questions (which turned out to be more comments than questions). On our side of the room there were six people, on the other, just the two. In any case, it seems the approval was (implicitly) given for us to go ahead with the application – we just hope the authorities don’t quibble over the lack of participants!

The last item we had to deal with before the fully completed hotel licence application could be lodged with the authorities was the issue of our rubbish. The new rules require all establishments to have a contract in place with a duly registered rubbish collector, so as not to unduly burden the local rubbish collection. To be honest, we suspect this is more about adding hurdles to those who have been advertising via Airbnb than anything else.

Nevertheless, after a few refusals due to the size of trucks vs the size of our road, Takako found a company that seemed suitable. So, on Wednesday just past, a very nice woman came to our humble abode to discuss the possibility of her company taking our rubbish. She was, in fact, the owner of the company and arrived in a very small tip truck (slightly bigger than a Tonka truck). We liked her immediately and decided she was a perfect fit for us, not just our road.

So we have now found the final piece to our puzzle, turns out it was on the bridge over the Kamo river on the way to where we buy our pet supplies…

(sorry, when we saw this piece of puzzle on the ground this week, it was such an obvious fit… )

Moving right along, as far as we know the application has now been submitted. We have been told it could take up to two months instead of the usual one month, but we are hoping that the big glut of applications is now clearing, since the deadline for those operating through Airbnb to be legally licenced is 15 June. If they continue to operate outside the system after that time they can be fined and quite a significant amount, I might add.

On that note, we saw an article in The Japan Times the other day which said that around 80% of listings for Japan have disappeared as Airbnb prepares to implement the new rules which require all listings to be appropriately licenced. Apparently the numbers have dropped from approximately 62,000 to about 13,000. On checking the listings for Kyoto today, there are now just over 300. We can only hope this will help boost our numbers, when we finally have a licence.

That’s all for now, but there will be a lot more next time as we have two festivals to attend this week, which I am looking forward to. Also, we are having some of our neighbours over for brunch tomorrow (a new concept here), which should be fun. These are the people we met during the Kiln Matsuri who were keen to try our cooking and who also helped us with some information for our hotel licence.

It’s hydrangea (ajisai in Japanese) time here now, so here’s a few parting shots…!

Cheers!!!

PS: A few people asked about the insect in my last post; it’s a Japanese Giant Hornet, it is venomous and around 40 people die each year after being stung…

When you have no land for lawn, you put it where you can!

Hello and welcome to the 14^th episode of the recurring series, Year 2 in Kyoto…😊. I thought I’d make up for the large gap between the previous two episodes by bringing this one forward. Also, since the BIG explanatory meeting for our neighbours is on this Sunday, it seemed sensible to get this one to the presses early.

The past week has been much more relaxed, if a little bit like a saga where the protagonists are wandering around somewhat confused. We received an email post the meeting with the scrivener which said they hoped we were getting ourselves organised for the BIG meeting, including updating our minshuku policies which we will be handing out to our neighbours on the day. So we have been left wondering exactly how to update this document (which is the policy document for our guests, laying down ye olde rules of the house). We have sent a reply asking what exactly they want amended or what to add, but haven’t had a response, as yet.

We have also been trying to find a rubbish collector for our business (and us), to comply with the Hotel Licence application rules, but have had little success in this endeavour so far. The company recommended to us by our builder said his trucks would be too big for our street, so he recommended another company. That company also said their trucks would be too big…In the meantime Craig had met one of our neighbours from the next door flats, a very nice woman who just happened to speak very good English. We knew that there was a company collecting the rubbish from the flats, so we asked this neighbour if she knew who collected their rubbish.

A few days later she came back to us and said the rubbish company for the flats (from Osaka) was not interested in contracting with us direct, but would be happy for us to sub-contract through the owner of the flats. She thought this wasn’t a good idea (and so do we), so she gave us the number of the rubbish collection section in the Kyoto government, for us to enquire if they know of a collector which has small enough trucks. Sigh – more news on this in the fullness of time!

The above serves to illustrate yet again just how helpful most of the Japanese people are. The amount of effort this woman went to to help us out, making at least three phone calls, is amazing. Needless to say, we are in her debt and, along with the man who found out who the community chairman is for the group next to us and his friend that gave him the information, we will invite them for a meal in the near future.

Weather-wise it certainly has warmed up now, with most days in the high 20s or low 30s and then the occasional day of rain (rain that periodically stops, as the forecast says). It is still not overly humid yet, with the days after the day of “rain that periodically stops” being slightly humid. So, running errands and going out generally is most pleasant – of course, I take my parasol on these outings!

During this period we have had two major outings, one which was a follow-up from my last post and the other to retrace the walk from our home to Fushimi Inari, visit the temples we didn’t go into last time and to take photos of the path to create a walking guide for our guests (one day, when we can actually have guests as an official hotel…).

Last post I talked a little about Sakamoto Ryōma, who started out as a ronin (masterless samurai), then ended up as a samurai assisting a high ranking official in the Tokugawa shogunate. I discovered during my research that Sakamoto and his friend, Nakaoka Shintarō, who was with Sakamoto on the night that he was assassinated (and who died a few days later) are buried together at the Ryosen Gokoku jinja (shrine), which is close to our home. I had never been to this shrine, which is nearly directly behind the giant Ryozen Kannon, so I just had to go and see it.

As with some shrines which are very important, ie have connections to very important people, there will be a very large torii at the end of the road leading up to the shrine. So it is with this shrine – I had seen the torii many times before and had wondered which shrine it related to, so now I know!! The shrine itself is up a fairly steep road and it is one of those that very few foreigners actually go to, which means it is fairly quiet. Unlike most shrines, there is a fee to go into this one but it isn’t much. Next to the burial site is a bronze statue of the pair, which overlooks Kyoto. The view from there is very good and certainly rivals the view from Fushimi Inari.

I also spent some time after my last post checking the storyline of The Samurai, one of my favourite TV shows when I was young, because the main character on that was named Shintaro. What I found was that, while there are many similarities between the story of Shintaro in the TV program and that of both Sakamoto and Nakaoka, there isn’t any direct link to the story of the real Shintaro.

 TV Shintaro

The other main outing we undertook was the retracing of the trail to Fushimi Inari. Along the way there are two significant temples which I wanted to visit; Imakumano Kannonji and Sennyuji. Both of these, as it turned out, are also rarely visited by foreigners and, on the day, there were very few people there. They were both lovely places to visit and there was a tangible serenity within their surrounds.

Imakumano Kannonji is a sub-temple of Sennyuji and is one of the West Japan 33 Kannon Temple Pilgrimage sites. It was founded by Kobo Daishi (Kukai) in 820CE, when it is said he carved an image of the Kannon out of wood himself and then enshrined it in a hut there (although it is not known if this is actually true or not). There is a carved statue of the Kannon from this time still in existence on display. There is also a large bronze statue of Kobo Daishi in the lead up to the main temple area and, on the temple plateau, there is a bronze statue of Bokefuji Kannon who is prayed to by those who want to prevent senile dementia. Around the base of this statue are small figurines of elderly men and women, no doubt placed there for the same purpose. Emperor Goshirakawa was buried at the site in 1234.

Sennyuji was founded in the early Heian period (running from 794 to 1185). Located here are the official tombs of Emperor Shijo (1242) and many of the emperors who came after him, as well as Emperor Gohorikawa (immediate predecessor of Shijo). The main Buddha hall was rebuilt in 1668 by Tokugawa Ietsuna and has a painting of a dragon on the central panel of the ceiling. A beautiful place, with an interesting mix of architectural styles and I suspect a must see in Autumn.

After we finished the walk, we took the train back to Tofukuji station and took a different path home from the station, just to see a different area. On the way home, we came across a small shrine in the backstreets, called Takio Jinja. Apparently it used to be located over near the fabric district but was badly damaged during the Onin War, a civil war that lasted from 1467 to 1477, and subsequently moved to this location. One very interesting part of this temple, is a large carved wooden dragon hanging from the ceiling of the worship hall.

Amazing what you can find in backstreets. One thing is certainly clear, buildings in Kyoto have a way of moving sites over time!!

That’s all for now – cheers!

The garden you have when you don’t have any land!!

Something Craig found out the front  while he was sweeping – and it’s not a bee…

Some interesting characters at Fushimi Inari. Kakkoii!!!

…and that’s your lot…for this post

Hello! Yes, it’s me again – you may remember me from some verbose wanderings that had been posted some time ago? Well, I know I have used this excuse before, but we really have been very busy; it has been the season of friends and family.

Taking up the story where I left off, we (Steven, Craig and myself) had just walked up to Fushimi Inari. After this, we caught a train to an area in Fushimi ward (suburb) where there are a number of sake (nihonshu) breweries. Getting off the train, you enter a long, covered arcade which has many interesting shops and eateries. At the end of this arcade, is another arcade to left which eventually becomes a shopping street, with older shops lining each side. It’s a really pleasant walk and worth going there just for that.

This street ends at a canal, with a street running along the canal. Each way on this street are many very old buildings, some in the machiya style. Many of the breweries are in lovely old wood and white plaster buildings. One presence you really notice here is the image of Sakamoto Ryōma, in paintings, photos and statues, who lived (and died) in the 1800s, who contributed to overthrowing the Tokugawa Shogunate and was a key figure in Japan’s modernisation. He was assassinated in 1867, at the age of 31, at an inn (Omiya Inn) which is in the Fushimi sake district.

The courtyard where the Omiya Inn used to be

The first brewery we came to was the Kizakura Kappa Country brewery which includes a small museum about nihonshu production, a restaurant/bar, a shop and a small art gallery and museum about the kappa, the mythical water creature I have previously talked about. It has a very nice courtyard area; perfect for enjoying lovely sunny days while drinking some nihonshu. I could have sat there for hours…😊.

On that note, the weather is still a bit up and down but there are now more lovely, sunny, warm days, then the occasional overcast or rainy day. When it rains, though, it really rains! It hasn’t been humid either, that is, until today. I hope we continue to get some more warm and not humid days before the walking puddle weather really sets in!!!

The next brewery we went into was the Gekkeikan brewery, which was established in Fushimi in 1637. At the brewery is the Gekkeikan Okura Sake Museum, which shows the tools and process of sake production and has good English explanations. A tasting of three of the drinks produced by Gekkeikan is included in the price at the end of the self-guided tour, which is a clever precursor to entering the shop. Hard to resist buying something when you have drunk some of their produce (which is better than the Gekkeikan nihonshu you can buy in Australia). The entry fee was ¥300 and included a 180 mL bottle of Junmai Ginjo nihonshu, which was quite pleasant too!!

The next day we took Steven to the Kyoto Botanical Gardens, mainly because we had never been there before and the weather was going to be nice for a stroll around a very large garden. The timing wasn’t that great in terms of what was in flower, although the peonies were fabulous. The gardens also include a huge glasshouse of various types of plants, including tropical, arid and fruit bearing. I tried to get some fruit, but I just couldn’t reach…(japing). As you might imagine, given my love of flower photography, I took just a few photos that day!

On Steven’s last day we went to Tofukuji in part because he had never been there before and in part because they were having an open day for local residents – so it was free for us to get into the main garden area. It isn’t as spectacular there outside of blossom time and autumn, but it is still a very nice place to be. I intend to return when the lotus is in flower – it has one of the biggest lotus ponds in Kyoto. Later that day, Steven left to return home.

After Steven’s departure, we had time to get our house in order (literally) and do some catch-up shopping and other errands prior to my brother’s arrival. Colin was here for a week and, having not been here before, we took him to a selection of places that we had been to before, including Nijo-jo (which we hadn’t been to for a while), a return trip to the Fushimi brewery area (which we obviously really enjoyed the first time!) and a trip to Osaka to see the castle. He is currently in Tokyo, enjoying the very big city and the various sights.

 Colin’s best Uncle Fester impression!

The day after Colin left, we had a brief but enjoyable visit from Matt (another of our taiko friends from Adelaide). He is in Japan to visit his fiancé’s family and took time to stay with us for one night. Matt also very kindly brought with him a very significant present of goodies from Adelaide, which we were running short of here and which are hard to come by – my favourite Twinings tea bags, Massell stock cubes and a haul of cumin, which we use a lot of in our cooking! It was a large bag full of these things and, while I had told him any of these things would be wonderful when he asked, the sheer volume was completely unexpected and very, very gratefully received 😊.

This week is the first week of the third sumo basho of the year, so we  also got to discuss this with Matt, which we used to do when we saw him at taiko class, as a fellow enthusiast. The very good news is that Hakuho is back, so I am enjoying see him again. I’m not sure how much longer he will continue – he has broken nearly every top sumo record there is now, except the most consecutive championships record. I will be very sad to see him go, just as it was very sad to see Harumafuji go, especially in the way he did.

During this period, we have had some further issues with obtaining our hotel licence, which has further delayed the time we are going to actually finally get it. The first issue was that the scrivener had been unable to get hold of the chair of the community group we are in. We had no idea he was having trouble until, after two weeks of trying, we were told and asked to get a list of all the committee members (which we could have got much earlier if we had known). Anyway, after we obtained the list, the scrivener finally got hold of the chair and met with him. Apparently the meeting was a bit terse for a while, due to a misunderstanding, and the result was a list of questions/items we had to address.

When we received them, we nearly choked, because some of them were nearly unanswerable and really did smack of xenophobia. After we went back to the interpreter to ask for a copy of the original report in Japanese, so we could discuss it with Takako and formulate responses (and her comment on some of the questions/items was WTF?), the scrivener asked to meet with us and Takako to try to sort things out. We got the impression from the list that the chair did not like us and did not want us to get our licence.

So, yesterday we all got together and went through the list, exactly what happened at the meeting and our situation. It turns out that the chair was actually on our side and he wanted us to be prepared to answer some very tricky questions that may arise at the explanatory meeting which we have to have with our neighbours. We found out that another guest house in the area had recently had to close down because of numerous complaints from the neighbours in this area, and the issues he gave were those that had been directed at the other guest house.

We also found out that there is a good chance we won’t get our licence until at least mid July…☹. The final application cannot be submitted until we have had the explanatory meeting and agreement of the neighbours is received. Further, because our house is on the boundary with the next community group, we will also be having a second explanatory meeting with them. This will all be happening on Sunday, 3 June, because we have to give two weeks notice before the meetings. It all seems to have become the never ending story.

Such is life.

Cheers for now!

PS  I should also add that our other guests brought generous gifts from Adelaide with them – Jenny & Steven brought tea bags, Twisties, Favourites and Tim Tams 😁, and Colin brought a haul of coffee pods 😃. Thankyou everyone for your generosity and thoughtfulness.

Craig gets caught up in a matsuri while dropping off at the station

 Tasting at a bottle shop

School bus…

 An Australian in the Botanic Gardens

 !Stranger than fiction

Now, where was I up to? Oh, that’s right, it was the weekend of the kiln matsuri and, yes, we did visit all the other nearby potteries on the Sunday. Again there were some very interesting items; some expensive, some not so expensive. We bought a lovely vase from one pottery (for the tokonoma of one of our rooms), which cost ¥2,000 and they thanked us by giving us two lovely tea cups (Japanese style)😊.

The last place on the trail turned out to be the gymnasium at the local primary school, where there were stalls set up for all of the potteries, so we got to see all of the different styles together in one place. We also saw the lovely man from the pottery where they served us tea and mochi, and he rushed over to us to say hello then told the nearby people who we were, which was nice.

One of the potteries we went to had five kilns, ranging in size from very large down to almost an esky sized one. The pots/works they produced were a real mix of amazing through to fairly mundane and varied in price significantly. They were very friendly and allowed us to go into the room where all of the kilns were housed – yes, it was more like a warehouse than a room.

On the Monday, the first of our friends from taiko arrived. She had done the first week of the taiko workshop in Fukui and then stayed with us for four nights. She managed to fit a lot of sightseeing into those four days and we very much enjoyed her company – thanks Yve for staying with us and we look forward to seeing some of the art you produce in the future.

On one of the days Yve was here, we went down to the nearby shops to purchase some supplies. As we turned into one of the many deadend streets near the shops, we noticed an unusual car driving towards the end. It was one of the Google camera cars, obviously taking photos of this street. Naturally, we had to take some photos of it and are also now wondering if we will be in any of the photos for this street!! We are also hoping that it drove down our street, so that it might show up on Google maps in the near future.

During that week the weather was mostly very nice, so it gave me a chance to sit out on the back deck on a couple of days, which I have been wanting to do since we moved in – I had missed sitting outside enjoying the warmth and doing some nature watching. In the case of our new backyard, the stone wall provides not only a nice background but it is also home for numerous skinks, which range in size up to around 20 cms. There seem to be three different colours – a brass/gold colour, a greenish dark bronze and what I have dubbed the rainbow skink. A lovely way to spend some time relaxing!

In terms of the weather, the maximum temperature is now varying between 18C and 30C, with some lovely sunny days, some cloudy and some quite wet days, where it basically rains all day. The really good news is that I have been able to wear a t-shirt and sandals for the first time this year 😊.

The day after Yve left us, another two friends who had been attending the Fukui taiko workshop arrived. The day after they arrived, two other people from Fukui came to visit Kyoto for the day. One of these people was Nicole, who is one of the teachers from the taiko group we used to play with in Adelaide and who had been taking the workshop in Fukui. The other person who came with her was a lovely, funny woman from the UK. They came up to see our new abode and then we took all four out for a walk along the foothills to see the old shopping area and the temples along the way.

It is amazing how many temples and shrines there are along the length of the Higashiyama foothills and into the Fushimi area. You can literally walk in either the north or south direction from our house and find a temple or shrine within five to ten minutes. There are walks mapped out which are available from tourist centres, although they do charge for some of them.

Ironically, at one point we could hear a taiko drum being played, so had to go see where it was and who was playing. It was just a single, large drum inside a building which housed some Buddhist murals and I suspect the man was playing occasionally to attract attention to the building. We tried to get Nicole to play a piece but she said she was taiko’d out and, honestly, I couldn’t blame her!!

The next day we took Steven and Jenny (our friends) to see Mt Hiei (known as the mother mountain) which is near Kyoto, although in the next prefecture over. Enryakuji temple is near the top of the mountain and is where the Tendai sect of Buddhism was founded in 788 CE. It has an interesting history and, at its peak, Enryakuji had around 3,000 sub-temples and a powerful army of warrior monks who often engaged in power struggles with other monasteries and political leaders. That is until the warlord Nobunaga laid siege to the mountain in 1571 and slaughtered all those living on the mountain, then razed the temple complex. Today, the complex consists of around 100 buildings and it really is a beautiful setting.

After this big adventure, they did their own thing for the next two days, including more antiques shopping at the Kitano Tenmangu shrine – both ended up with many finds and were happy with their purchases! On the Thursday, Jenny departed Kyoto, to go stay with her son and his family here in Japan. The next day we took Steven on a walk from our house on one of the above mentioned walks, through to Fushimi Inari. We had never done this walk, but we had seen a signpost near our house and were itching to try it out.

The walk was great, taking us through lush green areas, pass a couple of temples we have never been to and up the hill to enter the Fushimi Inari area from fairly high up on the mountain. The last part of the walk was very steep, but in some ways was easier than climbing the multitude stairs that form the Fushimi Inari trail. Also, there were very few people taking this walk, so it was much quieter, without the push and shove that can be the case when walking the lower part of the Fushimi Inari trail.

We plan to do this walk again by ourselves, so we can take suitable photos to create a walking sheet with directions for our guests. We also want to take time to go into the temples along the way, since they are close – in the neighbourhood, so to speak!

After we left Fushimi Inari we went to an area within the Fushimi ward where there are some sake breweries, but I am going to leave that until my next blog…stay tuned!!!

On a final note, we are still waiting, waiting, waiting for our hotel licence…(sigh). Maybe there will be more news on that front next time I sit down in front of this keyboard. We had hoped for a 1 May start, however, we keep finding out about further new requirements before we can get our licence – the latest being that we have to contract a commercial garbage collection company and provide their name to the authorities, even though we haven’t got our licence and so can’t officially open yet. We are hoping it won’t be too expensive to have collections, especially when we just don’t need them. There is no doubt they are putting as many obstacles as possible in the path of those applying for a licence for a minpaku listed on Airbnb.

So, that’s it for now – as always with fingers crossed…

Cheers!!

Peonies, wisteria, rhododendrons and the bamboo is popping!!!

 It’s a crane fly (not a huge mosquito)

 !

 Inoshishi (me)

 quack, quack, quack at Sherry Bar

Well, it seems that as much as I haven’t really planned this, I have now fallen into a bi-weekly posting routine. I suspect that, in the long term, this will continue unless there is something really newsworthy that I just have to report, like say we finally get our hotel licence, or we have our first full house (once we actually have our licence, of course).

So, what has happened in the last two weeks??? We continue to make progress in other areas, which is still important to reflect on. Firstly, though, what’s with the weather? Heatwaves in Adelaide in April and here, in Kyoto, the weather is bouncing around – warm, sunny and lovely one day, cool and cloudy the next, then windy with reasonably heavy rain. No thunderstorms yet, but I wait patiently (although, if it’s going to rain, why can’t we have some thunder and lightning, just to ramp things up a bit?).

The blossom is well and truly over. Lyndie and Tim were lucky to be here just as it came, and went. While the bloom seemed very quick this year, it was apparently much more intense, ie there were more blossoms on the trees than the average. It may well be the combination of the early warmth, then the wind and rain that brought this about. So, we are now into the azalea bloom, with the many hundreds of plants gradually coming into flower. There are also many grape hyacinth, tulips and daffodils around the streets, mainly in pots.

Our friends left Kyoto for other cities and then home last week, giving us time to reflect on how well we can cope with timing arrivals and departures, cleaning between stays, and, of course, how the breakfasts went, both in timing and in quality. We have realised that we will have to have a dryer in our laundry once business picks up (and when we can afford it…), however, other than that the actual cleaning wasn’t overly onerous.

In terms of food, we were reasonably happy with what we served up, but there is always room for improvement and we will also need to change our offerings as we move through the seasons and the available produce changes. We are going to make time to sit down with Takako in the near future and ‘workshop’ what we can cook and design some different daily menus. Any foods that we can prepare, or at least partially prepare the afternoon or night before certainly make life easier.

We have decided that, unless it is absolutely essential to serve earlier (such as for early train journeys), breakfast will be served between 8:00 and 9:00am. Craig also put together some ‘takeout’ breakfasts to take on those early train rides, which was appreciated. In the next two weeks we have some friends arriving from the Fukui taiko workshops to stay with us, which we are looking forward to. This will give us more pre-official opening practice time.

Progress has definitely been made on the unpacking/arranging/re-arranging front, with all boxes now unpacked!!! Yes, even the guilty secret storage room is now just storage room number 2. The cardboard room (aka guest room 2), is still the cardboard room, but we hope to have the empties collected in the next week. Our spare room is now more like a large walk in wardrobe, but at least there everything is out and I now have more choice in what to wear 😊.

On Friday, as we were returning from an outing, we noticed some men putting some banners along the roads in our area, which had ‘kiln matsuri’ written on them (in Japanese, of course). Yesterday, when we went out to do some shopping we noticed people wandering around the streets and so decided to wander around ourselves. I think I have mentioned before our neighbourhood is home to some Kiyomizu-yaki kilns. All pottery made in Kyoto is referred to as Kyo-yaki or Kiyomizu-yaki, more commonly the latter.

It turns out that we have 14 potteries located within 5 minutes walk of our home and yesterday we visited seven of them. One is located nearly directly across the road from us, and another sits atop the wall that lines our backyard. In fact, the two kilns (one electric and one gas) of the latter pottery are located right above our yard. Each of the potteries produces different works in terms of patterns and colours, although there are some dominant themes, such as the indigo designs. We actually saw some items decorated in the willow pattern yesterday.

It was fantastic going into each of the workshops and seeing the greenware, as well as the finished product. I must say, though, that these places are fairly rudimentary in terms of comfort for those working there. Many had bare floors and didn’t seem to have much in the way of heating or cooling. I have also noticed that there are lots of broken pottery pieces lying around these premises, including the pottery across the road from us. The other day when I was doing some weeding in the backyard it was like an archaeological dig and I now have a ‘finds’ area.

At two of the potteries there was someone who could speak some English, and combined with our small Japanese vocabulary, we were able to learn some more about their wares. At the first of these two I had looked at the final product and was then looking at the greenware and, noticing my interest, they got one of the partially finished bowls and a fully fired version and put them together for us to look at. They said that these bowls were fired twice, and they used iron oxides to make some of the colour.

After this they sat us down and served us tea and mochi, which was very nice!! A lot of the product that they produced appeared much more hand made than some of the other potteries. It was very nice work and I really did like it. We told the owners who we were (ie the new people in the area who have built the minshuku, which they knew about) and they were very welcoming and very nice.

After this I wanted to find the pottery that backs onto us and ended up not only finding them, but spending over an hour there. They were lovely people and it just happened that a near neighbour was nearby who spoke very good English and was interested in talking to us, so we were able to have quite a lengthy conversation with them all. At one point I asked where the actual kiln was and the next thing we were taken on a full tour of the pottery. It is a very large complex, and they make both moulded and hand thrown products. We also found out that the male owner sometimes plays in a Beatles cover band (as John Lennon) and he has said we have to see them play next time they perform.

They also said they would like to eat at our restaurant (a misunderstanding about the restaurant licence and what we are going to be serving) – so, we have sort of promised to cook for them one day! Perhaps we will make a  brunch or lunch for them. The English speaking neighbour was also keen to try out our food. All in all, it was an excellent way to meet some of our neighbours and learn more about our area. We are considering going to visit the other seven potteries today.

It seems there is always something new and interesting to discover here!!!

Cheers for now

Just a building near our backyard

A plant that is in our back yard – not sure what it is

…and what is this???

I’m trying to sleep!!!

Hello everyone! Here I am again, finally finding time to sit down, think about what we have been doing and imparting the more interesting/entertaining/important activities and issues we have undertaken and encountered.

Firstly, some good news regarding a couple of issues we had last posting time: we found the legs for my beloved coffee table and we found the missing eggshell china cup from the tea set my mother gave me 😊. This, as you can imagine, made me very happy. The trunk on the elephant, however, is still broken/badly repaired, no matter how much I wish for it to be otherwise.

The weather has now definitely moved into spring mode, with most days now above 20C. As a result, the blossom has opened fully and, as of today, it is definitely looking like it is going to be finished in the next few days. We took a walk down Kiyamachi dori today and it was literally snowing blossom petals, quite heavily at times when the wind picked up. So, I suspect there will be many disappointed people who arrive in Kyoto in the coming weeks hoping for blossom viewing.

On the home front, we have been working our way through the multitude boxes of ‘personal effects’ and struggling to find places for everything. It has been a process of arranging, then rearranging, then rearranging again. Unfortunately, the cupboards don’t get any bigger but we are getting most things in there – we just have to be careful when opening some doors…actually, it’s more like hoping the shelves and drawers don’t buckle under the weight.

We are down to two boxes of glassware in our spare room and the guilty secret storeroom/cupboard upstairs, which may remain a guilty secret for a while yet. We now also have another area which should be an empty guest room (no. 2) but is actually currently disposed as a cardboard room, full of empty boxes and boxes full of wrapping paper. The amount of paper that was used to wrap our items is mindboggling. A significant amount of the time we are spending emptying boxes is spent on the process of unwrapping then trying to flatten the paper and put it in some of the empty boxes. A substantial amount of the weight of our items in transport would just have been paper.

In terms of our minshuku, there is no further news on the hotel licence front, however, we have officially received our restaurant licence. So, we continue to wait. In the meantime, we currently have some friends staying here, who are very kindly acting as guinea pigs as we put into practice what we are hoping to do when we are fully functioning. The first day that Lyndie and Tim were here we didn’t have any furniture in the dining room, so we ad-libbed by using our outdoor furniture to seat them for breakfast.

Later that day, we had the delivery of the first phase of the dining room furniture (which basically means that’s all we could afford at the time…). We are very happy with how it looks and hope we can add to it in the near future. A few days later our pleated curtains (I would call them blinds, but our builder has called them pleated curtains) and standard curtains arrived. Gradually it is all coming together and it is looking better and better. Craig has also been busy putting up picture hooks so we can further decorate the spaces we have with various paintings/prints/items. Unfortunately the hardware store ran out of hooks, so we have to wait until they replenish their stocks to finish this.

We are now awaiting the inbuilt seating bench in the dining room so we can remove the two outdoors chairs and have enough seating for up to five people in the dining room without the use of stand-in furniture!! The process of preparing and serving breakfast has been a change for us, because we are more used to preparing and serving dinners for people, but it just means we are doing some of the prep work the afternoon before. Craig is enjoying making use of all the Japanese cookbooks we have – he is much more a ‘to the recipe’ cook than I am, so it suits him well. Having a rice cooker certainly makes things easier in the morning, rather than having to do it manually.

We started with Lyndie and Tim staying with us and now we have another friend staying here, so it is three for breakfast, which isn’t that much more work just more ingredients!! It has been very helpful for us, and in a way it is a good thing that we are easing into the daily process of serving guests rather than full tilt into the peak season. We are very much enjoying the company of other people, especially such nice people, and are very grateful for their indulgence! Next month we have more friends from Adelaide coming to stay, after they have attended the taiko workshop in Fukui, which we are looking forward to.

In terms of our ability to completely finish the fitout of the minshuku, we are still awaiting the sale of our flat, but unfortunately we still haven’t had any serious bites. We remain hopeful…At the moment we have enough in place for our current needs and we will add to what we have as needed and as money allows. We are getting somewhat used to the just-in-time way things are panning out for us.

Before I sign off, I just want to acknowledge the passing of Stephen Hawking, which I omitted last time. If there ever was a role model of perseverance against the odds, he is it. A great mind, with the ability to communicate his understanding to those of us who are not physicists and all through a range of technologies he was connected to. Vale Stephen.

Cheers for now

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 just a nice wall

 my new car…;-)

 happy easter!

 another new friend

Serena enjoys the window sill