Hello and welcome to Kyoto in the slightly rainy season. Yes, we have had a little rain, but not overly much. The forecast 200+ ml last week turned out to be only 105 ml. I realise that that is still quite a lot of rain in one day, but it doesn’t make up for the ran that hasn’t fallen. The last few days have been quite humid – Sunday was in the high 80s to low 90s all day. The first really humid day since I moved here and I can tell you I am not very good at humidity. My skin felt sticky and itchy most of the day. It’s still better than cold for me, however…

The kids have been lying full length on the floor and have enjoyed the fan at night, since the humidity started. On Humid Sunday (a new type of Sunday) I put the fan on during the day and they all found positions to take advantage of the breeze, along with me! I recently saw a segment on tv showing all the different types of umbrellas currently available (given that this is supposed to be the rainy season…). There was one that had a fan above the central rib joint area, which was presumably powered either by solar means or batteries. I now wish I had one of those when I’m out walking!!!! Quite expensive, though (over ¥60,000).

This week I decided to visit Kodai-ji temple. This was in part to provide some hopefully interesting photos and because I had seen a website that said this was the author’s favourite temple and garden to visit. Along with this, I had seen another website which said that the first machiya-style Starbucks in Japan was being prepared for trade near the Hokanji pagoda (the very famous Kyoto pagoda that you see many photos of), which is near Kodai-ji. This is the area between Kiyomizu-dera and Yasaka Shrine, in the Higashiyama foothills (near our flat). So, I just had to see that as well.

So, off I trekked, camera in hand, anticipation in mind. I went to find the Starbucks first, which involved going up past the pagoda. I took some lead up shots because it is a very impressive sight (the pagoda) no matter how many times you see it. Also, it was unbelievably quiet up there – normally there’d be hundreds of people going up and down that street, taking photos, wearing kimono, etc. I even got to one section of the road that was empty and I just had to take a photo of that too.

Anyway, I found the building, with a very traditional looking sign in it – not the usual Starbucks sticker on the window. It is actually an old machiya building which they are renovating for purpose. What is a machiya, you say???? Machiya are traditional wooden townhouses (the literal translation of machiya) found throughout Japan, and which are very much a feature of Kyoto. The typical Kyoto machiya is a long wooden home with a fairly narrow street frontage, with little or no space at the back of the block. They comprise earthen walls and baked tile roofs and  often contain one or more small courtyard gardens. Generally, they are one, one and a half or two storeys high. In Kyoto they are sometimes called kyomachiya and have defined the architectural style of downtown Kyoto for centuries.

After finding this, I headed for Kodai-ji., through the amazingly traditional backstreets in that area (lots of machiya). Just prior to Kodai-ji is the Ryozen Kannon temple, which I had passed a number of times before but never been into. So, I decided it was time. The temple with the Kannon on top was built in 1955 to commemorate all the Japanese people who had died in WWII. In 1958 a monument was added to the temple complex to commemorate the 48,000 unknown soldiers from around the world who had died on Japanese, and Japanese controlled, territory during WWII.

I’m glad I went in – it was a lovely place and certainly felt very peaceful. There was also a very large stone with the Buddha’s footprints engraved on it and a wishing stone (although I didn’t know at the time that was what it was – I certainly would have made a big wish there…). You can also go inside the Kannon, which is called the womb of the Kannon, and houses the principal images associated with the Asian zodiac – essentially all various statues of Bodhisattva, from what I could see in the darkness of the ‘womb’.

After that interlude, I went into the Kodai-ji temple complex. I can see why it is a favourite, it really was beautiful. The temple was established in 1605 by Kita-no-Mandokoro (aka Nene) in memory of her late husband – Toyotomi Hideyoshi, a fairly important person in the history of Japan. You may recall that my local shrine is a Toyokuni shrine, established to commemorate Toyotomi Hideyoshi.

I could go on and on about this temple and garden, but I will let the photos speak for themselves. One thing that did happen there, which was a bit difficult, I broke my vegetarian diet…a fly flew into my mouth and was gone before I had a chance to react. It wasn’t my choice to ingest a fly – it was an unfortunate, and uncomfortable, accident.

In the world of tv this week, I saw another hilarious show (as so many are here), mainly involving a series of skits, some of which were loosely joined by a theme of a samurai household and the goings on therein. The main character had his faced painted white, in kabuki style, so I’m not sure who it was, but he was a very good taiko player as well as comedian and actor.

There was a guest at the beginning of the show – a guy Craig and I have seen before here during our various visits, who is an impersonator, mostly of male singers. He is extremely good at what he does and very funny, as well as obviously having a good voice. While I don’t know most of the singers he is impersonating, I have seen some of them and his caricature of them is incredibly good.

Finally, before I sign off, I just want to put in a plug for a friend who has recently opened a shop in Regent Arcade. It is called Hebe & Co, and sells skincare and beauty products which are cruelty free and vegan. I recently tried one of their nail polishes (yes, I know, surprise, surprise) and it was an excellent product. It went on smoothly and the finish was very good. Jenny is one of the subscribers to this blog, so go in and meet her and maybe buy some products!

http://rundlemall.com/business-directory/hebe-co/

Well, that’s it for now – hopefully I will have some positive news re the never ending house sale story in the next few weeks!!!

Cheers

Doesn’t time fly???

Hello! Welcome to week 29, a fairly quiet and very dry week. The weather stubbornly continued to remain rainless and from the stories on the news and the slightly extended weather forecasts, I think the authorities are beginning to get a little worried. Having said that, as I sit here in my official office, at my official desk, it is raining outside! Finally, after two weeks of no rain during the rainy season, the forward forecast went from “brief rain” for today, to “rain which briefly stops” as of Monday, to “rain” this morning. Of course that was easy to say, given it had been raining since before midnight.

The tv forecast last night indicated there would be 200 – 250 ml over the next 24 hrs for the Kyoto area. So, in an effort to make up for it’s misdemeanours, the weather decided to try to catch up with the missed rain. It is going to have to do a lot better, though, because that is not enough and the forward forecast again is looking very dry.

It seems that the gradual creep of climate change is having its effect here – the idea of a rainy season may well disappear and be replaced by single days of very heavy rainfall. This, of course, has flow on effects (…) including localised flooding and landslides. It also means that more of the water in storage will have got there as a result of heavy rainfall, which has lead to flooding and consequential erosion. This causes sedimentation of the water storage dams, resulting in reduced storage capacity. Also, sediments can carry chemicals and nutrients that affect the water quality.

The other effect that I have noticed here over the last few years is that the typhoon season is extending – and while Kyoto is not on the coast, so doesn’t take the direct brunt of the winds, etc, it very often receives the ‘tail’ weather, ie flooding rains.

Anyway, enough of climate change 101.

What else has happened? I had a visit from a nice police officer, which I assume was a follow-up from the visit of the Kyoto officials. She asked a lot of questions about a guest house and I did my best to answer them so she could understand. Funny, though, how when you are trying to work out what they want and where this is all leading the ‘other language’ capacity of the brain seems to diminish. In the end she seemed satisfied and left. I assume the police would have greater powers to search records and could find information held by other departments/authorities.

Finally, in an effort to actually provide some pictorial interest to this particular post (since there are no new flowers to report), I thought I would mention a Kabuki performance I saw the last 20 minutes of the other day. I wish I could have seen it all, as it was a comedy/parody of other Kabuki performances. At one point, one of the characters suddenly ripped of the hat he had on, was given some make-up and a mirror from an assistant who came out onto the stage (not in costume), changed his make-up, put on a long wig, ripped off the kimono he had on and revealed another underneath. It was very unexpected and very funny (unfortunately, I didn’t get any photos of this).

At another point, the set started rolling away to each side while the curtains remained open and a second set moved up from behind – it was Mt Fuji. One of the characters then climbed up Mt Fuji and deposited the contents of a ceramic jar into the volcano, which then sent up a snake-like plume of smoke. I assume that the contents had been poisonous. It was a very colourful performance and wonderfully funny. The audience loved it. I recognised some of the performers, so I think it was a special event performance.

So, that’s it – quite a short posting for me! I hope those of you in Adelaide are coping well with winter. Today is the winter solstice for you, so I hope you all enjoy the day and keep in mind that the days will now start getting longer again. For me, it is summer solstice today. At the moment, it starts getting lighter at around 4:00am…

Cheers

(and cheers from kappa)

Yes, yes, I know, I’ve been a bit slack – well, I consider week 27 to be a hiatus…and I am hoping the muse is now upon me again!

Hello, and welcome to week 28. Apparently we have now entered the rainy season here in Kyoto, but there doesn’t seem to be much of that going on. We did have two lovely thunderstorms during the hiatus week and there was one day during this week when it did rain continuously for over twelve hours, however, there doesn’t appear to be much in the forecast for at least the next seven days.

I took full advantage of the first thunderstorm, which commenced late in the afternoon, by going down to Kamogawa (the river) to watch the light effects and then returned up to the nearby park once it got dark and enjoyed the show from there – I even did a little “singing and dancing in the rain”, with associated light and sound effects!!! The second storm was much more spectacular, moving in around 11:00pm a couple of nights later. I was asleep and it was the precursor wind that woke me. Then it was on – essentially non-stop lightning and thunder for around an hour. The kids were not happy, especially when one bolt of lightning went off right above us!!!

It’s interesting because it is the quietest here tourist-wise that it has been since I arrived. I assume it is because it is supposed to be the rainy season. Anyway, it is nice not being quite so crowded around the Gion area. I went into the Starbucks in the Gion the other day and it was only around half full. Generally, it is nearly impossible to get a seat at a Starbucks, unless it is really early in the morning. Yes, I said Starbucks. Here, in Japan, they are much better than I have experienced elsewhere. They make a very nice matcha frappuccino, amongst other niceties.

The tourists are missing out – the weather is ideal for wandering around and the continuing flower show that is Kyoto is again lovely. We are now up to hydrangea time. Who knew that hydrangeas could be street plants?? I hadn’t really paid that much attention to the bushes lining Kawaramachi street and other places nearby my flat; there are so many plants and trees all around Kyoto that your focus is generally drawn to what is in flower, or colour (autumn), or coming into leaf and growing from the stumps along the streets, as the Ginkgo trees have been (they prune them very hard at the end of the season).

around the corner

Other than the ongoing floral spectacular, things have been fairly quiet here. I haven’t heard anything re the building approvals, so I’m assuming that is still moving along. I did have a visit from two Kyoto officials the other day asking if the flat was being operated as a guest house – apparently someone had said it was. They apologised and left fairly quickly once I said I owned the flat. Minpaku accommodation (ie private home accommodation) is still not legal across Japan, only in certain designated areas in Tokyo and Osaka. There are still many who oppose the idea but, to be honest, it fills a gap in the accommodation that is available in some areas; Kyoto being a good case in point.

Otherwise I haven’t done that much. The other day I found out from tv there was going to be a big market near the Heian Shrine, so I decided to go there for an outing. There were many stalls, but nothing that really grabbed me and made me loosen my purse strings. On the walk back from there (it’s about a 7km round trip), I decided to go up into the foothills to go through the temples and parks up there, to see if any of the gardens had hydrangea displays. As it turned out, there were a few bushes in Chion-in temple, but otherwise mostly just greenery. I went into one of the two gardens in the temple – the Yuuzen’en garden, which was very nice.

After that I walked through Maruyama park, where the lovely old weeping cherry tree is that we used on the business card for our flat (illegal minpaku…), when we were still renting it out, which we are not now. The tree is around 80 years old. While there, a lovely cat just wandered across the roadway in front of me from the cherry tree to a tree near the pond. There were quite a few people around, but it was not at all concerned. So, I went over to talk to it and pat it (as I have a wont to do with cats) and I took its photo:

I also recently caught the end of a story on tv which I’m sure said there was a small exhibition of Yayoi Kusama’s art somewhere in the Gion area, but unfortunately I haven’t been able to find any reference to it anywhere else; not even the electronic oracle. Yayoi Kusama is one of my favourite contemporary Japanese artists. Her work is quite avant-garde and she is a self described ‘obsessional artist’. The flowers below are a permanent installation at the Matsumoto City Museum of Art, which we have visited a couple of times to see her permanent exhibition there. She was born in Matsumoto. One of the town buses in Matsutmoto, called Town Sneakers, has been decorated by Yayoi.

Despite that disappointment, I can now report that I have discovered what and where the photo is that I labelled with wtf in my last post. I have been watching a regular segment on tv which is following two men walking from the top to the bottom of Hyogo Prefecture, visiting onsen (hot springs usually with accommodation houses attached), temples, shrines and various other places along the way. The other night, they visited a park and lo and behold, there was my creature!!! Unfortunately I was slightly distracted when it came on and missed where it was. So, to the electronic oracle and after a few hits and misses I found it!!!

At Tsujikawayama Park, in Fukusaki, they put the kappa in the pond (as per my previous photo) as a tourist drawcard. Kappa are mythical Japanese creatures which supposedly dwell in rivers and ponds. They are typically described as being humanoid with a beaked mouth, reptilian skin, webbed fingers, and a special “plate” on their heads which must always be filled with water while on land, or else they’ll lose their power. Kappa apparently also have an inexplicable yearning for cucumbers!? Anyway, it obviously worked as a local attraction, because they have since installed two others in the water and many other creatures in the park – some more kappa and some other creatures. The kappa in the water rise up out of the water once every half hour.

Needless to say, I am planning to visit this park – it looks like just my kind of place! Problem solved. Never let it be said that I’ll let go of something once my curiosity is piqued…

Just before I sign off, I have to say vale to an actor who played one of my favourite characters on tv – Adam West – who played Batman in the wonderful spoof (a point somehow missed by at least one journalist who wrote an article about him) which I watched religiously as a child, along with the Addams Family.

“Some days you just can’t get rid of a bomb!”

Cheers for now