Hi all and welcome to week 9 – well, actually it’s currently week 10 but this post is related to week 9.

I have to say that after all the highs and lows of the previous weeks, it was a pretty quiet week really. There were my usual outings, mainly directed at shopping, and which are completely driven by the weather. That is, at the beginning of the week, I look at what is coming weather-wise and decide which days I am going to go out and where to. As I don’t have a car, I do my shopping in parts. There are some places better for certain things than others, so it is also driven by what I need. Hence, I have to decide what I am going to eat for the week at the same time.

Generally, I am making meals which have 3 servings in them, although sometimes I overestimate and have to eat the same meal on 4 nights…but I am making 2 meals for each week. Also, every fortnight I have to walk over to Aeon Mall (is that from Aeon Flux??? or, was Aeon Flux named after a mall???), to get the cat supplies. Luckily they deliver and it is free – I suspect it is because I spend over 5,000¥ each time.

I also have to take my granny trolley with me on those outings during which I will be buying heavy things such as milk, drinking yoghurt and my veggies for the week. Then, of course, there is the nihonshu and that is a heavy item. I have tried to find a decent red here, but I haven’t lucked out yet. There is very little Australian wine here and I am not that up with French or Italian wines. I bought a Sangiovese a while back, it was over 3,000¥ (and that is expensive for here), but it was somewhat watery. Nothing like the lovely big wines in Australia…sigh. Yes, I do miss them. That cache of wine under the beds in the spare room…5 doz. Rockford…

This week Serena has really got into the bird watching. Outside the main window there are a couple of largish trees, quite nice really, and the birds do like to congregate there at times. In particular, there are 2 turtledoves who sleep in the trees overnight (and no, no partridge…), which she has taken a specific interest in. When she is really deep in observation of birds, she makes little noises, like little chirrups. When watching these two she is also using her ‘I want food’ noise and licking her lips!!! Shows how deeply embedded the desire to eat birds is in cats, considering we got her at 3 months and she has been an indoor cat, her only forays outside in a harness. She also paws at the window sometimes too. Here she is really getting hyped up (note the very rapidly moving tail) and below is one of the taunting turtledoves.

One thing that has taken my interest, which I saw on tv, is the public display of mummified monks in some temples, mainly in Yamagata. These monks are not bound or in any way covered, although they are dressed, as you can see below. This is one of the most famous mummies, the monk Daijuku Bosatsu Shinnyokai Shonin (1687-1783) at Dainichibo Temple. This is the one I saw on tv.

With my curiosity piqued, I did a little research on these monks and was somewhat surprised by the results. I don’t know if any of you will be interested as well, Craig said he was not at all interested…I must say, I am not inclined to travel to Yamagata to see them, but all the same, I found it interesting. See what you think…

It is said the practice of self-mummification, known as sokushinbutsu, was pioneered by a Japanese monk named Kukai over 1,000 years ago. This was a ritual undertaken by a Buddhist monk over a number of years that ended in the death and complete preservation of the body of the monk. This process of self-mummification was mainly practiced in Yamagata between the 11th and 19th centuries, by members of the Japanese school of Buddhism called Shingon (“True Word”). Those who undertook the ritual of sokushinbutsu did not view this as an act of suicide, but rather as a form of further enlightenment.

The steps involved in mummifying their own body were extremely rigorous and painful. For the first 1,000 days, the monks ceased all food except nuts, seeds, fruits and berries and they undertook extensive physical activity to strip themselves of all body fat. For the next 1,000 days, their diet was restricted to bark and roots. Near the end of this period, they would drink a poisonous tea made from the sap of the Urushi tree, which caused vomiting and a rapid loss of body fluids, which also caused the internal organs to shrink. It also acted as a preservative and killed off maggots and bacteria that would cause the body to decay after death.

In the final stage, after more than six years of preparation, the monk would lock himself in a stone tomb not much larger than his body, where he would go into a state of meditation. He was seated in the lotus position, and remained so until he died. A small air tube provided oxygen to the tomb. Each day, the monk rang a bell to let the outside world know he was still alive. When the bell stopped ringing, the tube was removed and the tomb sealed for the final thousand day period of the ritual.

Their body would be naturally preserved as a mummy with skin and teeth intact, without decay and without the need of any artificial preservatives.

The government did ultimately ban the practice in 1879. It is unknown how many monks actually ended their lives this way, but many have been found.

Anyway, I thought it was interesting…

Now, onto the photo of the week, which is related to my observation above of the dearth of Australian wines here. I do look to see if I can find any, and sometimes I find things which surprise even me!

Delightful!!!!!!!!

Never heard of it?!

And cheers to us all!

Greetings and welcome to week 8 – a week filled with sumo, lots of money changing hands and a special care package from Australia.

I had hoped to have good news on the sumo front, but it was not to be. So, I will have to rise above my considerable disappointment and finish off the ‘Sumo for Absolute Beginners’ guide. In last week’s episode, the rikishi had finished their rituals. So we come to tachiai, or the initial charge. The two wrestlers start by squatting either side of parallel lines in the centre of the dohyou, with the referee standing opposite the centre of the dohyou, slightly to the side of them. They jump up from this position once they have both touched the ground with their fists. At this point they very often clash heads…ouch.

Which brings me to my next point, the rikishi fight and enter the dohyou from either the east side or the west side. This is related to their ranking and performance. The east side is for those higher ranked at each level. Hakuho has been on the east side for some time, although this time because one of the other highest ranked rikishi was out injured, he swapped to the west side for two matches, presumably to balance things up. Unfortunately he lost both bouts while on the west – I think it upset his usual style because he is so used to entering the dohyou and tachiai on the east side.

There are five ranks in the professional sumo world – from maegashira through to yokozuna. There are no weight or height divisions; it is possible that the smallest rikishi could be up against the largest. While weight can tend to be an advantage if you are trying to oust your opponent, it can also be used against you through momentum. In the end, it generally comes down to technique.

To win, you must either force your opponent out of the dohyou, or force them to touch the ground with any other part of their body, apart from the soles of their feet (of course). As the dohyou is elevated above the ground (up to 60cm), they can sometimes fall quite heavily. It’s amazing they don’t really hurt themselves. The other thing is that there are five judges sitting around the base of the dohyou along with some of the audience. As you can imagine, sometimes the rikishi end up falling onto either, or both. I would not be very keen to have one of these very large men fall on me!!!!

Once one opponent is either out of the dohyou or has touched the ground, the referee declares the winner, unless there is some doubt about who touched the ground first either inside or outside the dohyou. At this point the judges come into play. The winner may or may not receive a prize after winning the bout. Prizes come from advertising, which takes the form of banners being carried around the dohyou prior to the particular bout. The more advertising, the bigger the prize. Apparently the rikishi receive 50% of the advertising fee. This also means that the more popular and higher ranked rikishi get more prize money. There are separate prizes at the end of the basho for best performed, etc.

…and so we leave the world of sumo until the next honbasho, the spring honbasho in March.

Also this week, apart from some event in the US on Friday, which I don’t want to mention, we settled on the land. So, Craig and I are now the proud owners of a carpark! Not sure how many parking spaces, but what it does mean is that it is covered in asphalt, which you will have seen in the photos.

Now all we need is to decide on a design and get the tractors and trucks rolling – of course, given the street the land is on is very narrow, they will be small versions of what we are used to seeing in Australia on building sites.

There has been more snow since last week, although nowhere near as much. In fact, it is snowing now. I also experienced another type of falling wetness the other day, which I think is actually sleet (of course there does seem to be some dispute about what exactly sleet is – apparently it can depend on where you come from). My version was small balls of icy snowy hail-like wetness. Apparently this happens when snow falls and as it falls it melts and then re-freezes before it reaches the ground.

The other item I mentioned above is the care package sent by Craig. How wonderful it was to receive it – and very exciting to see what was included. It was a large box with an assortment of items from plugs through to clothes and shoes (which I had put aside to be sent once I got here). Plugs? you say. Well, yes. I have been trying to find a plug to fit the smaller sink in the kitchen, so I can wash up in the actual sink, not a plastic container which we bought in July. Otherwise, you are washing dishes under running water, and while water may be in much more plentiful supply here than in Australia, I still don’t like wasting water like that.

So, that brings me to the end of week 8, but before I go, I want to send a huge thank you to Tom, who has helped me set up the subscriber function on the blog page. Being an absolute novice at blogging (I hadn’t even really read one before, just a couple of bits and pieces), I had no idea about widgets and plugins, etc. As far as I was concerned a widget was a term you used in economics for a general consumer item. For those who I have sent an email to previously and those who have commented, you have already been added as a subscriber. The other thing you will notice is that I have updated the design of the blog. I would rather create my own from scratch, but for the moment it looks somewhat better, I think. Please let me know what you think.

I have had a couple of request for particular photos – of the Kamogawa (river) near our flat and the kids. I added a photo of the Kamogawa resplendent in snow last week, so this week here it is without the snow.

Finally, the photo of the week…which fits in with the weather here and just to round out the snowman focus. This week I bought some angora socks (very warm!!! J), and one pair just had to be snowman themed. So, here they are:-

Cheers and here’s to keeping warm!

Following the highs of the Special Edition, comes the inevitable lows of ‘well not much happened’, which is pretty much what week 6 was all about. The kids are really settling in and me settling into a routine around them. Serena has really taken to the cat tower, which pleases me. I have, in fact modified it twice now to make it more suitable. Cat tower engineering…

One slightly more unusual activity I undertook during the week, was to try out a yuzu bath. Yuzu are Japanese citrus, which are fairly bitter but very aromatic. It is the practice at some onsens to have whole yuzu in the baths. What is an onsen, you say? Essentially an onsen is a hot spring (related to volcanic activity) as well as being the name for the accommodation and bathing facilities associated with them. They are more often in country areas and can be quite expensive and exclusive.

I don’t recall us ever having stayed in one, although when we stayed at Yudanaka, near an area where there are snow monkeys, the accommodation we stayed in did have their own hot spring. Also, as I recall, they had an automated piano in the breakfast room which played continuously while we were having breakfast. It was somewhat weird. Also, we were the only people in the breakfast room because it was 2011, just after the tsunami – but that’s another story.

Anyway, back to the yuzu in the bath…apparently it is good for protecting against colds, to treat rough skin, to warm the body and relax the mind! Whether or not any of these claims is true, I decided to try it out. It was very aromatic and quite pleasant on a winter’s afternoon.

So, onto week 7, and what an important week! It is the first of two weeks of the first honbasho of the year!!!!!!! Yes, it’s sumo time! Technically, the basho runs for 15 days, so a bit over 2 weeks. They are held at different venues around Japan – this one is in Tokyo. Come 4:30 every day during this period, you will find me in front of the tv watching the sumo, unless something prevents me from doing so…but it would have to be pretty important.

Being the first honbasho of the year, the Emperor and Empress made a special appearance on the first day. They appear such nice people and the crowd absolutely loved them. There was a special area for them to sit in, in large orange chairs. They are not huge people, and the chairs made look even smaller, and as to why orange? I took some photos of them for this blog and later, when reviewing, found one photo with a ghostly overlay of Hakuho, who happens to be my favourite sumo wrestler (see below). How did this happen – I have no idea. Somewhat strange.

There is a lot of ritual involved in sumo, in part because it is related to Shinto. The wrestlers sip water to cleanse and throw purifying salt into the ring before they enter and they clap their hands to summon the Kami. The referee dresses like a Shinto priest, which adds to the spectacle as they can be very colourful, and a Shinto shrine hangs over the ring (literally, from the ceiling).

Before the rikishi (sumo wrestlers) actually get to the business of wrestling, they usually spend several minutes in a preparation ritual, extending their arms, stamping their feet, squatting, and also generally trying to make the opponent unsettled. Each rikishi has their own movements or postures they like to do. Hakuho tends to stamp his feet on the edge of the ring (dohyou) 5 times and he always does some hamstring stretching and back twists. Another of the rikishi bends backwards, usually once, and the crowd always love that. I have to say, for a large man, he can bend quite a long way back!

 Stretching...

After all that posturing and bending and stretching and staring at the opponent, the actual bout can last less than a minute, in fact seconds! Certainly I haven’t seen one go more than a couple of minutes. Last night one started and then finished when one opponent slipped and fell.

Today is day 8, and so far Hakuho and one other rikishi haven’t lost…and I’m not a big fan of the other rikishi, so I’m on tenterhooks. More on the sumo next week.

Oh, there was one other thing of some importance this week, I signed the contract for the block of land on behalf of Craig and myself this week. Next week is settlement.

Finally, today Kyoto awoke to quite a lot of snow, and it is still snowing at 11:30am, although not that heavily. I was planning to go out to an archery tournament at Sanjuusangen-dou, a Buddhist temple about 15 minutes walk away. So, I got up early, got ready and went outside briefly to check out the street…

Luckily I have a pair of boots which have ripple soles, so I decided to wear them, knowing how dangerous it can get when there is a lot of snow and then people walking on it. It basically compacts to ice (for those who haven’t experienced this). I had experienced this once before, and nearly came a cropper – legs and feet going everywhere. After that, I held onto Craig to stay upright, but even then I was slipping…

Anyway, I went up to the temple, thinking maybe there wouldn’t be so many people there…wrong. Apart from the multitude people there to have their shot, as it were, all dressed in traditional clothing, there were many spectators. I ended up seeing the target and some arrows flying (and mostly missing), but that was it. So, I decided to walk down to the Kamogawa (Kamo river) which is very near our flat and is the main river through Kyoto. It was very nice, a winter wonderland, (*o*).

I must say, walking that carefully and slowly, picking your way through the snow (about 15cm deep in spots) and avoiding the ice, while keeping away from cars on our road, which isn’t overly wide, was more tiring on the legs than I expected. Especially as I am doing so much walking at the moment.

Finally, it comes to photo of the week, and what else would I choose than a snowman! This one is the right way up and had been created by staff at the local Lawsons convenience store. Cheers

Welcome to the Xmas and New Year Special Edition

As most of you will be aware, there aren’t many Christians in Japan, so Xmas here has very little to do with religion here. What it does have a lot to do with is decorations, presents, cards, food and fun. So, yes, it is celebrated here mainly in a commercial way and with friends. Xmas day is not a public holiday.

The decorations not only include upside down snowmen, but also reindeer, Santa-san, trees and lots of lights. A lot of effort is put into decorating areas with lights – lots and lots of fairy lights and other lighting effects. It is called “irumineshon” (long e). People go out in their thousands to see the irumineshon. I personally didn’t go out because it would have involved me travelling around by myself at night. So, unfortunately I didn’t see any of it this time. I plan to do this for Xmas later this year. The photos below are examples of the kind of lighting they do.

Retailers push the sales of gifts and cards, just as they do in Australia and elsewhere. The biggest difference lies in the food. The Japanese love cake and desserts just as much as anyone else, and they have a specific cake for Xmas but it is a sponge cake decorated mainly with strawberries and cream, ie red and white. For Xmas I bought a matcha (green tea) sponge cake wedge (yes, not the whole cake!) with cream and a little strawberry conserve decoration. This is mainly because I love matcha cakes and desserts and I thought that green was suitable for Xmas. Also, I am not a huge fan of vanilla sponge cake.

The other food many Japanese eat at Xmas is fried chicken, with the big winner here being KFC. Apparently it started in the 70s when KFC had a big advertising campaign about eating KFC for Xmas. Obviously it was a stunning success for them and they make up special buckets, etc just for Xmas every year. I made mushroom pasta for my dinner, which is completely different to anything I would normally have for xmas, but it involved some slightly more expensive items such as Blue Castello, and I had to find wheat flour and cream, which I did. It was very nice (even if I do say so myself) and I had it with some French bubbles (of course).

Once Xmas is over, and I mean immediately, the decorations come down. Then up go decorations for new year. This involves not only retail areas, but also private dwellings where many people put up special New Year decorations. I put one up as well (see photo below). The decorations are for protection, to ward off bad spirits, and for good luck for the coming year.

Interestingly, there has been much made of it being the end of the year of the monkey and the upcoming year of the rooster. As you can see, my decoration has a little chook on it. It seems that New Year in terms of the lunar calendar festivities is celebrated as much on 1 January as it is at actual lunar new year here. The changeover to using the Gregorian calendar happened in Japan in the 1800s, so the date of new year was changed to 1 January at that time along with the celebration.

New Year is a much more important celebration than Xmas, and tends to be the time family gets together to celebrate. It is about the death or passing of the old year and the birth of the new year. This is all intertwined with both Buddhist (relating to death and passing) and Shinto (relating to life and the future) aspects.

Again I celebrated with French bubbles…

On the night, I set my alarm to wake me at 11:45 so I could hear the temple bells being rung. I know, I know, but as most of you who know me will realise I am hopeless at staying awake late. Also, I hadn’t decided if I would go outside to listen or just stay in the warmth! Anyway, the alarm went off and already I could hear the bell at the local temple being rung. It is a VERY large bell, larger than most you see at temples, hence quite loud. So, with my interest piqued I decided to get up, put my puffy jacket on, tidy my hair and go downstairs.

Surprisingly it wasn’t as cold as I expected – my hands didn’t immediately feel painful! The local shrine and temple are at one place nearby, less than 10 minutes walk from the flat. It is a Toyokuni shrine, to commemorate Toyotomi Hideyoshi (predecessor of the Tokugawa shogunate, who lived in the 1500s). As I’m standing outside I notice lots of people heading up towards the shrine, so, on an impulse, I decide to go up too. It just seemed right and I felt quite safe.

There were many people at the shrine and temple, with a very large queue leading to the bell because they were allowing the people to ring the bell. The bell (see photo above) has a very large pole held vertically on chains and rope which is used to strike the bell. For this bell, the striker is the size of a tree – although it doesn’t look like that in the photo. Remember the striker is at least at shoulder height when you strike the bell. I doubt I could have swung it enough to make much noise. There were groups going up to ring it together. It was quite lovely, actually. Just after I got there, the crowd applauded, not because I was there and in my jammies, but for midnight. There was no yelling, no fireworks, just applause.

I stayed a little longer then left and passed the massive queue lining up to go into the shrine itself to say their greetings to Kami and to pick up some items, including their fortune for the year. I decided against lining up, in part because I was in my jammies and in part because I hadn’t brought any money to offer Kami.

On Monday I did go back, hoping the crowds wouldn’t be so large, to pay my respects to Kami and ask for a good year. There was a queue but it was much smaller and I was actually dressed appropriately!

Unfortunately there was no snow on either Xmas day or for New Year, however, there was some snow on the 28^th. There wasn’t much and it rained a bit as well – at the same time. So both were falling together. I hadn’t seen or heard of that before, so something new for me. It was very exciting when I saw the snow falling outside my window that morning! Nothing since…

The final photo below is one Craig sent me which shows that they do indeed have fireworks for New Year in some places in Japan.

Cheers for now…

…and now we return to our normal transmission…

Yes, I’m back! It has been a dark time, the world has seemed somewhat more remote over the last three weeks. I am amazed at how frustrated and isolated I felt without access to what I would call normal wifi and, thereby, the internet. How reliant I have become on having it just always available. The world without Mr Google!

So, given I have missed three weeks, there is a reasonable amount to catch up on. I won’t talk about the recently passed Xmas and New Year’s Eve – they will have their very own Special Edition.

When I left you last, I think I had just announced we had found a suitable block of land and the contract signing was imminent. Well, it still hasn’t happened, thanks to issues with transferring money here and with signing. Our agent was concerned that Craig wouldn’t be here to sign as well, so that his name would be on the title – with good reason, because there is a very hefty gift tax here (and I mean very hefty – up to 50% as I recall). So, you can’t just change the title after the event without incurring this tax. It doesn’t function at all like the capital gains tax and there is no reduction over time or if the property is a personal residence.

Luckily there is a way that somebody (me in this case, because I have Craig’s inkan) can be proxy for another person. This, however, has caused delays because Craig had to go to a Notary and have an Apostille drawn up. He was trying to find one in the week before xmas. You can imagine how well that went.

Anyway, the result of all this is that the contract is being signed on the 10^th and settlement is on the 20^th. I think the owner has been very patient in all this.

So onto other news; I finally found a bank that would allow me to open an account even though my current visa is for only 4 months. The Bank of Kyoto…bless them. So, now we transfer money from Australia to our own account. Now, when I say our account, it is in my name only. It seems you cannot open an account here in 2 personal names, unless there is a corporate structure around them. So, for the first time since we became partners, we will have separate accounts.

The kids arrived!!!!! They were dropped off here on the afternoon of the 22^nd of December. It wasn’t exactly the most pleasant arrival – their cages had quite a bit of fluid in them, so much so that their tails and back ends were literally dripping wet. Something I didn’t expect when I opened the cages to let them out – and it stank. So, when they left their cages (Ziggy straight away off to explore; Zowie a little slower but also had a bit of a look around; Serena ran straight under a bed and didn’t emerge for over 24 hours) they spread the smell around the flat. Luckily I had had the forethought to close the door to the tatami room before they arrived.

I had thought Ziggy would be the most traumatised, with Zowie slightly worried and Serena would be fine. How wrong I was. Anyway, they have all now settled in and even Zowie is getting used to being inside in a smallish area. It has helped a lot to have them here. I now have some company and they keep me busy with feeding and cleaning.

The other thing that I have spent some time doing is watching tv at night. I have found it is a very good way to listen to people talking and to learn new words. Also they actually write on screen what the topics are and what people are saying in the news. So I get to read the kana and kanji as well.

As you can imagine, Japanese tv is somewhat different to Australian tv, particularly in certain areas. Yes, there is a lot of kawaii stuff, especially in the commercials (see above – yes, Japan is actually a cat and a kitten and tv here does have quite a few cats on it). There is another stand out difference and that is the number of trannies on tv – both transgender and transvestite. I didn’t think about it at first, but it sort of struck me one night. There are quite a few celebrities who are trans, but you also see cross dressing of those who are normally not trans, just for specific things (these are mostly men). I wondered if this is related to the long history of Kabuki, so that it is quite accepted here.

The other standout for me is how many of the programs involve humour – whether they be panel shows just talking and being funny, or shows which go to different places in Japan, with comedians just walking around looking at things and eating, or game style shows. Which brings me to the show below. It was new year’s eve, I am by myself and needed a laugh, Well, I have to say I haven’t laughed as much at a show as this one – I was pretty much crying. The 5 contestants (all celebs) were taken to a number of different places, where situations occurred. The thing is they weren’t allowed to laugh, no matter how funny the situation. If they did, they were called out (literally) and then a guy, or some guys, in camo fatigues with balaclavas and red berets would come long and hit them on the back-side with a long, rubber truncheon. The person(s) called out would have to stand up, turn round and present their back-sides to the “soldiers”. This happened many, many times during the show.

(note that one of the celebs is dressed as a woman – BTW the statue is Einstein who seems to be the hero of the show)

My photo of the week(s) is taken from tv, and is not so much kawaii as what the…? I had just turned on the tv and caught the end of a story with a journo talking on a bridge during the news. I didn’t notice the creature in the water at first, then it was a what the…? moment. Unfortunately, I didn’t catch where it was or what for, but you can have a look for yourself. Funnily enough, I didn’t even notice the figures in the background until I checked the photo later to see if it came out ok.

…and here is a bonus photo of the week, with a competition to provide the best explanation for the creature at the bottom left hand side of the photo.

Finally, for this episode, I want to send blessings to the person or persons who invented the heated toilet seat. In the middle of the night, on these cold nights (and I do heat a little, because we are talking under 5 degrees at night,) when I sit down and the seat is not freezing cold, I always thank those concerned, including Toto (not the dog, the company which made the toilet in our flat).

So, that’s all for now folks, but I will now commence work on the Special Edition…I know you can’t wait!!