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.
