Hi all and welcome to my week in Kyoto, it being number 49 and fast heading towards the twelve month mark! It seems amazing to me that I have been here so long. This time last year I was making all the final preparations before leaving, such as notifying the relevant organisations that I would be departing in the near future, trying to determine what to bring with me, particularly clothing, and how to fit everything into the cases. I was also trying to catch up with as many people as possible before D day.

So, what has happened here this week? Firstly, the weather has been much better, although remaining cool. Secondly, the much anticipated autumnal colour change is moving on and looking good. The Ginko trees have only just started turning yellow, which with the reds and oranges is what makes the autumn here so wonderful.

Turning to The Very Nearly House, visible progress is much less obvious now, although there have been a few changes which do make a difference. The bathrooms have all been installed upstairs (no stairs yet…should it be upladder??) and they look bigger than I thought they would. The good news is that we have been able to have Toto washlets (toilets) installed, which is a bonus for our future guests. The other very obvious change is the opening up of the atrium to reveal the full height of the entrance area. I only hope the light bulbs never need changing…

 The atrium

 ‘upladder’

Now that the colour has started, it was time to take Craig to a couple of places he hadn’t been to – Kodaiji and Tofukuji. This week I decided that we should visit Kodaiji, in part because I suspected that Tofukuji will be even more spectacular the more colour that is out. So, we picked the day we thought would be best in terms of sunlight and set off to one of the areas in Kyoto that is nearly always wall to wall people.

…and so it was, however, Kodaiji itself wasn’t very crowded at all, which was a huge relief. The interesting thing about the visit this time is that there were some rooms/parts of buildings that were open that weren’t when I went there earlier this year, which was fantastic. The other thing, of course, was the added beauty of the autumn colours, along with the fact that it wasn’t very hot and humid.

After we left there we went on to visit Maruyama Park, since it is fairly close to Kodaiji and also a lovely place to visit. We actually climbed further up the hill than we had been before, which was very nice and, surprisingly, found another temple! Following this, we went back down through the park and into Yasaka jinja. When we got there, there was a large crowd gathering, police directing where people could stand and tv cameras – so I just had to find out who or what was about to happen. We found a spot where we could see through the crowd and then a man came along and encouraged the crowd to make a lot of noise and take photos!!!! Most strange – it is usually the opposite when something happens at a temple or shrine. It turned out that some very famous Kabuki actors were visiting the shrine, although I’m not sure exactly what they were doing there.

Last post I mentioned I thought that with the end Halloween all the xmas decorations would go up – I was wrong. The end of that week , as it turned out, was Culture Day (a public holiday) and the decorations in place for that were mostly Japanese flags. As it happened, this caused us some issues because we had gone up to the Legal Affairs Bureau to get an updated copy of our company registration certificate (over 3kms from our flat) and it was closed. We must remember to check the calendar more often!!!! It’s the second time we have been caught out.

On the way back home, we noticed there were some xmas decorations in shops, but not out in the streets. So, we have for your enjoyment a photo of xmas Snoopy, as a foretaste for more to come 😊.

Well, that’s it for this week – hopefully the weather will continue to be kind so we can get out and find more of that glorious autumn colour (am I being repetitive???). More to come…

Cheers