And here it is week 16 already – actually, I am now half-way into week 17! Hard to believe I have been here nearly four months. Looking back, we have achieved quite a lot and continue to move toward our ultimate goal – Addams Vegan B&B up and running. There is just one more major hurdle (plus some slightly less major approvals hurdles) to us fully relocating here to Kyoto. Craig left me at 6:00 this morning and, as I write this, is winging his way to Changi. His mission, which he chose to accept (ok, he didn’t have much choice really), is to find a buyer then clear out our house in Adelaide.

As for the previous week, we again visited our lawyer in Osaka twice. Luckily the cost of the train journey from Kyoto to Osaka is not overly much on the Keihan line local train. It takes around 45 minutes, so not too time consuming – although our appointment on Friday lasted around five minutes, just to pick up Craig’s passport. The result of these appointments is that we now have a registered company and our applications are in to have our visas extended; this time for 12 months, thankfully.

On Tuesday we went to one of the better supermarkets here, Global Kitchen, which is in the basement of the Yodobashi store. Yodobashi is a fantastic place where you can find nearly anything electrical and electronic and is where we have bought all of our electrical equipment to date. Our most recent purchases include a rice cooker (wonderful piece of equipment!!!!) and a printer. The only issue when buying there is the amount of choice you have for any item.

They also stock many other non-electrical items, so while we were there on Tuesday we decided to look at pushbikes – they have a large selection of different types of bikes, and some are motorised. I was looking at these…yes, I am considering buying a motorised push bike. The main reason for this is we live in the foothills at the moment and our carpark is higher up the hills, so some extra assistance on the inclines will be much appreciated. I am not now, nor will I ever be, a lycra clad biking enthusiast. The motorised bikes cost upwards of ¥100,000 (~$1,200), which I thought was quite reasonable.

Wednesday was a down day due to the weather, but on Thursday it was lovely and sunny, so we went exploring to find a café in the Gion area I had seen on TV which served a matcha toast dish I really wanted to try…and it was definitely worth it!! It was a lovely place, although a little tricky to find – determination wins out. The entrance was through the back of a shop, but it also backed onto a lovely small laneway, of which there are many in the Gion area. There were a lot of small craft shops along this lane and many specialised in glass and enamel. We also found an art gallery, which was having an exhibition of two artists’ work – one who did collage work one-handed and the other who made pottery and ceramic pieces.

Both were very good and in the end we bought a pair of clay masks which are based on the masks made traditionally in Okinawa and are made to scare off evil spirits and bring in good spirits. The artist is a very lovely Japanese woman named Emi and she actually went to Okinawa to study the making of these masks.

(I realised after taking this photo that I had them back to front – the open mouthed mask should be on the right…)

We also visited two shrines on the way to Teavenir (the café), which I had seen on one of my wanderings. The first shrine was dedicated to pigs (of which I am one in the Asian zodiac) and the other dedicated to a number of deities, including the cow. The cow deity is the one students visit to help them do well in their studies. As for the other shrine, I felt right at home amongst all those pigs, as you can see in the picture below! The Gion area is quite amazing for many reasons, one being that it has more shrines and temples per block than any other area I can think of anywhere in Japan.

Friday was our second visit to our lawyer, then on Saturday we had an appointment with the builder and architect to sign a contract. We thought we would be signing with both, but it turned out the first contract was with the architect. The first use of our company inkan. The contract with the builder will be made closer to the time of construction commencement – which is likely to be in July. For now, the architect will be seeking all the required approvals for our house/minshuku.

The other milestone this week building-wise, was the placing of the sign indicating our intention to build a minshuku on our carpark. This sign has our company name, my name and phone number and the company address, which also happens to be my address. One of the tasks the architect takes on is the fielding of any calls about our intentions and any complaints (thankfully – not something I could do easily).

Prior to our appointment with them we went to the home centre again to buy some more planters, soil and some edible plants for us. We bought lettuce seedlings and some seeds – herbs and some greens (Swiss chard and Asian greens). These are now all potted up and sitting on our windowsill next to the pots of grass, which are the edible plants for the kids. We are all watching them very closely in anticipation!!!!

Monday turned out to be a public holiday here, to celebrate the spring equinox. It was a lovely sunny day again and we took the opportunity to go for a wander around and visit our carpark to get photos of the sign. We were going to go to the bank to transfer the first payment instalment to the architect, but that was out of the question when we saw the shutters down. The next day was wet most of the day but we had to go to the bank to make the payment. This was transacted via an ATM, with significant help from one of the tellers at the bank. It was incredibly complicated and I was very grateful for the help

So, this brings me to now – alone again…just the kids and me. It was a little harder this time having to see Craig leave. I know it won’t be anywhere near as long this time, but still hard none the less.

Hello and welcome to week 15! This week has been rather less filled with building issues but still comprising a certain amount of bureaucracy. We have visited our lawyer in Osaka twice, having just returned from the second visit. Our company is now officially registered and the relevant taxation authorities have been notified. The company inkan has also been registered. So, we are ready to go – all we need is a place to ply our trade from…or something. We are now awaiting the official notice of intention to build sign to go up on the carpark.

After our visit to the lawyer last week, we decided to visit the Dotonbori area and, in particular, the Sennichimae Doguyasuji Shopping arcade. This arcade has many specialty cooking stores along it, which sell all kinds of cooking utensils and kitchen items. A wonderful place to look for your kitchen requirements – although it is more aimed at cooking professionals. We took the opportunity to really look at what was available there for our business and also to buy a steamer for vegetables. We ended up buying a two tiered bamboo steamer, which fits inside one of our pots.

The best thing was that we found two places that sell Kitchenaid mixers. The price here is slightly lower than in Australia, but not by much. Anyway, we were very happy to find these and various other items which we will want for our B&B. One of the items we were looking for is a shichirin (kanteki in the Kansai region, where Kyoto is), a portable earthenware table top grill which generally uses charcoal as the heat source. These are fairly versatile and we will be using them as part of our cooking repertoire.

Later in the week, we made a ‘pilgrimage’ to my favourite Buddhist temple – Kurama-dera on Kuramayama (Mt Kurama). We have visited this temple, which is high up the mountain, nearly every time we have visited Kyoto. It is a beautiful place and provides very good exercise climbing up to the temple! In the past we have taken the train all the way to Kurama station and then climbed up to the temple and sometimes beyond to an amazing cedar grove near the top of the mountain.

This time, however, we decided to approach the temple by climbing up a track from Kibune, a beautiful village one train stop back from Kurama. Luckily we didn’t have any idea quite how hard this would be. A website we looked at said it was an easy hike – we suspect this writer was a winning competitor in the Empire State Building stair climb. We made the climb last Friday and are still feeling the effects in our leg muscles today (Monday), particularly our calves. It really was a beautiful climb, which I noticed occasionally while dragging myself panting up the very rudimentary ‘stairs’. These stairs were very steep in places. (note that the photos of the stairs are not ours – the battery on my camera suddenly went flat as I tried to take the first photo)

One thing we did notice, through the veil of near exhaustion, was a number of huge trees which had literally broken near the base and fallen over, and a number of these looked like they had only recently snapped. I became a little more wary of any wood groaning noises after that…

After our pilgrimage was completed and my breathing had returned to normal, along with the colour of my face, we had lunch at a lovely vegan restaurant at the base of the temple complex site called Yoshuji. We found this place last time we visited Kurama-dera, yet it had been there all along. Shows how easy it is to miss things when there are so many other things to take your attention, especially since we had been searching for vegetarian places since we first came to visit Japan. The menu consists mainly of mountain vegetables, noodles and rice and other vegan foodstuffs, such as tofu and konyaku. It is all very nice and well priced.

On a sad note, the large statue of Tengu at the Kurama station was covered this time, due to a tragic breakage brought about by snow. The Tengu, which is an anthropomorphised version of a bird creature, has a very large nose. Unfortunately, during the recent heavy snow falls the weight of the snow brought down the nose and so Tengu currently has no nose. For a while he was uncovered but had a ‘bandaid’ to cover the ‘wound’, but the other day he was covered, perhaps for an urgently needed ‘operation’.

On Saturday, we visited a Home Centre, which we found after being told of its existence. This centre was Bunnings meets Chemist Warehouse meets Supercheap Auto meets Super Amart, with some groceries and a bicycle shop, all in one. We had a wonderful time looking around and found some lovely light fittings for our future home.

Our outing on Sunday involved a reconnaissance of our future local neighbourhood. We were particularly looking for any supa and konbini (supermarkets and convenience stores). We found a Fresco supa which is fairly close to our carpark and it was one of the largest we have been to here in Kyoto. There were many other shops but they were all closed. We were not sure if they were closed because it was Sunday or they were just not there any more. We will be going back there during the week to check this.

We also found a lovely shrine there (I know, most shrines are lovely…) which is devoted to a three legged crow deity and the performing arts, and is noted as the birthplace of Noh. The shrine is noteworthy for the huge camphor tree at the front of the shrine complex, which was transplanted there by then retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa himself in 1163. Go-Shirakawa had established the shrine in 1160. The tree is worshipped as the god of health and long life. There is also a collection of painted slabs of stone and timber in the grounds, depicting various images including some Noh scenes and various other scenes, which, if you look closely, have crows in them.

Finally, I have some kawai photos, for your viewing pleasure, all taken in Osaka at the Dotonbori.

Yes it’s been a while, so this posting will be bringing you the news and information from weeks 13 and 14!!!! Last time I was talking about a popular topic…chocolate. I also mentioned that I was going to have a visitor. Craig arrived on Thursday morning, 23 February, and ever since then we have been rather busy. We have had two meetings with the builder and architect refining our minshuku design, one meeting with our lawyer and three visits to the Higashiyama ward office, amongst other things.

Starting on Thursday, after Craig gathered himself together with coffee and a shower, we walked up to our carpark so he could view the glory of a bitumen covered piece of land. It’s funny how on second viewing it looked a bit smaller. When we arrived there we found a car actually parked on our piece of land! Anyway, Craig liked the area and I was much relieved considering I had actually already signed and paid for it.

On Friday we went up to the ward office to register both Craig and his inkan. I thought this would be relatively straight forward, since I had already undertaken these tasks without much issue, however, it turned out we had to prove we were married and then there was the issue of who was head of the household! So, we completed as much information as we could then had to come back home to get the proof of our nuptials. Now, I do have all our important documents here, so that wasn’t an issue. What really caused me to squirm is that there is a very large mistake on our marriage certificate, which indicates that we were married in a Christian Revival Crusade service. Clearly not true, it was a civil service, but this is now on our formal records here.

The certificate also has our “old” names on it, so we then had to show we both changed our names by deed poll. Which brings up the second mistake in our personal records, which is that instead of issuing me with a name change document, for some reason unknown to anyone except himself, the clerk in the registry office issued a new birth certificate for me. Try explaining that to Japanese officials. Luckily they accepted the documents without further ado – it could have been messy though!

The next day we met with the builder and architect. This meeting was to look at the changes the architect had made based on my discussion with them the last time we met, to find out the result of their measuring of the land and to get an official schedule of the build, which our lawyer wanted. It turns out that one of the walls along the side of the block is actually built on our land, including quite large footings. This has impacted how the side of the house towards the back is going to be, because the cost of removing the footings and re-building the wall would be prohibitive. So, the final result is that the deck area on that side will have to be shorter than planned.

Other than that we were very happy with the changes made. Also, some of the regulations we were worried would impact our design didn’t have the impact we were worried about – mainly the fire regulations. We were sent away with more homework to do – deciding how many power points we wanted and where. We had to complete this task by our next meeting, which was the following Saturday.

On Tuesday we went to Teramachi to collect our company inkan and on Wednesday off to Osaka to meet with our lawyer. At this meeting we handed over the proof of our purchase of the carpark, the latest design for our minshuku and the schedule. The lawyer also dropped the bombshell that he would have to hand over our passports and residence cards to extend our visas and this would need to happen closer to the expiry date of our current visas – 25 March. Putting 2 and 2 together, the outcome is that Craig has to stay here until the 21^st of March, which of course delays the sale of our house, but, it does give us more time to actually do things other than preparing for and having meetings.

The lawyer also gave us homework, which was to get an official copy of the registration of our personal inkan, to get some new photos for our cards and (and this is the kicker) to go to the bank and take out the money we have there to put into the company and then to re-deposit it – on the same day. This is apparently to prove we can do this…????? So, on Friday we completed our assigned tasks, including the highly embarrassing withdrawal and deposit of the money. I’m sure the staff there thought I was a mad gaijin (foreigner). The good news in all of this is that the lawyer is going to apply to extend our visas for 12 months, so no more renewals for the time being, saving a lot of money!!!

On Thursday, however, we did a touristy thing and visited Fushimimomoyama- jou (castle). In all the times we have visited Kyoto, we had never been to this castle, so it was fun to go to a new place here. The castle is a little run down, and doesn’t seem to be a popular tourist venue, but it is very nice none-the-less. It was amazing to go to a place here in Kyoto and not have many people around.

Yesterday (Saturday) we again met with the builder and architect, to go through our homework (I think we passed!) and to bed as much down as possible for a final quote for the build, the architect and all approvals. We have selected many things, including floor coverings, lights and window dressings, and most importantly the heated toilets. The sign for the intention to build will have to go up on the carpark prior to the build with our details on it, so we also have to get that all bedded down, which includes the registration of our company.

Today (Sunday) we took time out to go to the antiques market at Touji temple, which occurs on the first Sunday of every month. I was looking to buy a vase so I can have some flowers in the flat, given it is now essentially spring here. I ended up buying two…There were many things I would have liked to buy, but I managed to control myself, given we will have to spend a lot to get this minshuku up and running. As an aside, the construction of this temple was overseen by Kukai, previously mentioned in Week 9 as the monk who pioneered the self-mummification ritual.

Tomorrow, we are off to Osaka see the lawyer again and present our homework (ie certificates, photos and proof of the money in the bank). It is also Craig’s birthday, so we will be going out to dinner somewhere – Craig is hoping to go to an Italian restaurant which is near our carpark. Wood oven pizza!!!!!!

This week I have decided to add some photos of our local area, which is the Gion area. There are many small and very traditional roads nearby and you often see either Geiko or Maiko walking around there.

…and, if you are wondering who is now the official head of the household…? After much consideration, we decided to take the traditional Japanese route and Craig is now officially installed as Head of the Household! His crown will be arriving soon.