Hello and welcome to the 14^th episode of the recurring series, Year 2 in Kyoto…😊. I thought I’d make up for the large gap between the previous two episodes by bringing this one forward. Also, since the BIG explanatory meeting for our neighbours is on this Sunday, it seemed sensible to get this one to the presses early.

The past week has been much more relaxed, if a little bit like a saga where the protagonists are wandering around somewhat confused. We received an email post the meeting with the scrivener which said they hoped we were getting ourselves organised for the BIG meeting, including updating our minshuku policies which we will be handing out to our neighbours on the day. So we have been left wondering exactly how to update this document (which is the policy document for our guests, laying down ye olde rules of the house). We have sent a reply asking what exactly they want amended or what to add, but haven’t had a response, as yet.

We have also been trying to find a rubbish collector for our business (and us), to comply with the Hotel Licence application rules, but have had little success in this endeavour so far. The company recommended to us by our builder said his trucks would be too big for our street, so he recommended another company. That company also said their trucks would be too big…In the meantime Craig had met one of our neighbours from the next door flats, a very nice woman who just happened to speak very good English. We knew that there was a company collecting the rubbish from the flats, so we asked this neighbour if she knew who collected their rubbish.

A few days later she came back to us and said the rubbish company for the flats (from Osaka) was not interested in contracting with us direct, but would be happy for us to sub-contract through the owner of the flats. She thought this wasn’t a good idea (and so do we), so she gave us the number of the rubbish collection section in the Kyoto government, for us to enquire if they know of a collector which has small enough trucks. Sigh – more news on this in the fullness of time!

The above serves to illustrate yet again just how helpful most of the Japanese people are. The amount of effort this woman went to to help us out, making at least three phone calls, is amazing. Needless to say, we are in her debt and, along with the man who found out who the community chairman is for the group next to us and his friend that gave him the information, we will invite them for a meal in the near future.

Weather-wise it certainly has warmed up now, with most days in the high 20s or low 30s and then the occasional day of rain (rain that periodically stops, as the forecast says). It is still not overly humid yet, with the days after the day of “rain that periodically stops” being slightly humid. So, running errands and going out generally is most pleasant – of course, I take my parasol on these outings!

During this period we have had two major outings, one which was a follow-up from my last post and the other to retrace the walk from our home to Fushimi Inari, visit the temples we didn’t go into last time and to take photos of the path to create a walking guide for our guests (one day, when we can actually have guests as an official hotel…).

Last post I talked a little about Sakamoto Ryōma, who started out as a ronin (masterless samurai), then ended up as a samurai assisting a high ranking official in the Tokugawa shogunate. I discovered during my research that Sakamoto and his friend, Nakaoka Shintarō, who was with Sakamoto on the night that he was assassinated (and who died a few days later) are buried together at the Ryosen Gokoku jinja (shrine), which is close to our home. I had never been to this shrine, which is nearly directly behind the giant Ryozen Kannon, so I just had to go and see it.

As with some shrines which are very important, ie have connections to very important people, there will be a very large torii at the end of the road leading up to the shrine. So it is with this shrine – I had seen the torii many times before and had wondered which shrine it related to, so now I know!! The shrine itself is up a fairly steep road and it is one of those that very few foreigners actually go to, which means it is fairly quiet. Unlike most shrines, there is a fee to go into this one but it isn’t much. Next to the burial site is a bronze statue of the pair, which overlooks Kyoto. The view from there is very good and certainly rivals the view from Fushimi Inari.

I also spent some time after my last post checking the storyline of The Samurai, one of my favourite TV shows when I was young, because the main character on that was named Shintaro. What I found was that, while there are many similarities between the story of Shintaro in the TV program and that of both Sakamoto and Nakaoka, there isn’t any direct link to the story of the real Shintaro.

 TV Shintaro

The other main outing we undertook was the retracing of the trail to Fushimi Inari. Along the way there are two significant temples which I wanted to visit; Imakumano Kannonji and Sennyuji. Both of these, as it turned out, are also rarely visited by foreigners and, on the day, there were very few people there. They were both lovely places to visit and there was a tangible serenity within their surrounds.

Imakumano Kannonji is a sub-temple of Sennyuji and is one of the West Japan 33 Kannon Temple Pilgrimage sites. It was founded by Kobo Daishi (Kukai) in 820CE, when it is said he carved an image of the Kannon out of wood himself and then enshrined it in a hut there (although it is not known if this is actually true or not). There is a carved statue of the Kannon from this time still in existence on display. There is also a large bronze statue of Kobo Daishi in the lead up to the main temple area and, on the temple plateau, there is a bronze statue of Bokefuji Kannon who is prayed to by those who want to prevent senile dementia. Around the base of this statue are small figurines of elderly men and women, no doubt placed there for the same purpose. Emperor Goshirakawa was buried at the site in 1234.

Sennyuji was founded in the early Heian period (running from 794 to 1185). Located here are the official tombs of Emperor Shijo (1242) and many of the emperors who came after him, as well as Emperor Gohorikawa (immediate predecessor of Shijo). The main Buddha hall was rebuilt in 1668 by Tokugawa Ietsuna and has a painting of a dragon on the central panel of the ceiling. A beautiful place, with an interesting mix of architectural styles and I suspect a must see in Autumn.

After we finished the walk, we took the train back to Tofukuji station and took a different path home from the station, just to see a different area. On the way home, we came across a small shrine in the backstreets, called Takio Jinja. Apparently it used to be located over near the fabric district but was badly damaged during the Onin War, a civil war that lasted from 1467 to 1477, and subsequently moved to this location. One very interesting part of this temple, is a large carved wooden dragon hanging from the ceiling of the worship hall.

Amazing what you can find in backstreets. One thing is certainly clear, buildings in Kyoto have a way of moving sites over time!!

That’s all for now – cheers!

The garden you have when you don’t have any land!!

Something Craig found out the front  while he was sweeping – and it’s not a bee…

Some interesting characters at Fushimi Inari. Kakkoii!!!

…and that’s your lot…for this post

Hello! Yes, it’s me again – you may remember me from some verbose wanderings that had been posted some time ago? Well, I know I have used this excuse before, but we really have been very busy; it has been the season of friends and family.

Taking up the story where I left off, we (Steven, Craig and myself) had just walked up to Fushimi Inari. After this, we caught a train to an area in Fushimi ward (suburb) where there are a number of sake (nihonshu) breweries. Getting off the train, you enter a long, covered arcade which has many interesting shops and eateries. At the end of this arcade, is another arcade to left which eventually becomes a shopping street, with older shops lining each side. It’s a really pleasant walk and worth going there just for that.

This street ends at a canal, with a street running along the canal. Each way on this street are many very old buildings, some in the machiya style. Many of the breweries are in lovely old wood and white plaster buildings. One presence you really notice here is the image of Sakamoto Ryōma, in paintings, photos and statues, who lived (and died) in the 1800s, who contributed to overthrowing the Tokugawa Shogunate and was a key figure in Japan’s modernisation. He was assassinated in 1867, at the age of 31, at an inn (Omiya Inn) which is in the Fushimi sake district.

The courtyard where the Omiya Inn used to be

The first brewery we came to was the Kizakura Kappa Country brewery which includes a small museum about nihonshu production, a restaurant/bar, a shop and a small art gallery and museum about the kappa, the mythical water creature I have previously talked about. It has a very nice courtyard area; perfect for enjoying lovely sunny days while drinking some nihonshu. I could have sat there for hours…😊.

On that note, the weather is still a bit up and down but there are now more lovely, sunny, warm days, then the occasional overcast or rainy day. When it rains, though, it really rains! It hasn’t been humid either, that is, until today. I hope we continue to get some more warm and not humid days before the walking puddle weather really sets in!!!

The next brewery we went into was the Gekkeikan brewery, which was established in Fushimi in 1637. At the brewery is the Gekkeikan Okura Sake Museum, which shows the tools and process of sake production and has good English explanations. A tasting of three of the drinks produced by Gekkeikan is included in the price at the end of the self-guided tour, which is a clever precursor to entering the shop. Hard to resist buying something when you have drunk some of their produce (which is better than the Gekkeikan nihonshu you can buy in Australia). The entry fee was ¥300 and included a 180 mL bottle of Junmai Ginjo nihonshu, which was quite pleasant too!!

The next day we took Steven to the Kyoto Botanical Gardens, mainly because we had never been there before and the weather was going to be nice for a stroll around a very large garden. The timing wasn’t that great in terms of what was in flower, although the peonies were fabulous. The gardens also include a huge glasshouse of various types of plants, including tropical, arid and fruit bearing. I tried to get some fruit, but I just couldn’t reach…(japing). As you might imagine, given my love of flower photography, I took just a few photos that day!

On Steven’s last day we went to Tofukuji in part because he had never been there before and in part because they were having an open day for local residents – so it was free for us to get into the main garden area. It isn’t as spectacular there outside of blossom time and autumn, but it is still a very nice place to be. I intend to return when the lotus is in flower – it has one of the biggest lotus ponds in Kyoto. Later that day, Steven left to return home.

After Steven’s departure, we had time to get our house in order (literally) and do some catch-up shopping and other errands prior to my brother’s arrival. Colin was here for a week and, having not been here before, we took him to a selection of places that we had been to before, including Nijo-jo (which we hadn’t been to for a while), a return trip to the Fushimi brewery area (which we obviously really enjoyed the first time!) and a trip to Osaka to see the castle. He is currently in Tokyo, enjoying the very big city and the various sights.

 Colin’s best Uncle Fester impression!

The day after Colin left, we had a brief but enjoyable visit from Matt (another of our taiko friends from Adelaide). He is in Japan to visit his fiancé’s family and took time to stay with us for one night. Matt also very kindly brought with him a very significant present of goodies from Adelaide, which we were running short of here and which are hard to come by – my favourite Twinings tea bags, Massell stock cubes and a haul of cumin, which we use a lot of in our cooking! It was a large bag full of these things and, while I had told him any of these things would be wonderful when he asked, the sheer volume was completely unexpected and very, very gratefully received 😊.

This week is the first week of the third sumo basho of the year, so we  also got to discuss this with Matt, which we used to do when we saw him at taiko class, as a fellow enthusiast. The very good news is that Hakuho is back, so I am enjoying see him again. I’m not sure how much longer he will continue – he has broken nearly every top sumo record there is now, except the most consecutive championships record. I will be very sad to see him go, just as it was very sad to see Harumafuji go, especially in the way he did.

During this period, we have had some further issues with obtaining our hotel licence, which has further delayed the time we are going to actually finally get it. The first issue was that the scrivener had been unable to get hold of the chair of the community group we are in. We had no idea he was having trouble until, after two weeks of trying, we were told and asked to get a list of all the committee members (which we could have got much earlier if we had known). Anyway, after we obtained the list, the scrivener finally got hold of the chair and met with him. Apparently the meeting was a bit terse for a while, due to a misunderstanding, and the result was a list of questions/items we had to address.

When we received them, we nearly choked, because some of them were nearly unanswerable and really did smack of xenophobia. After we went back to the interpreter to ask for a copy of the original report in Japanese, so we could discuss it with Takako and formulate responses (and her comment on some of the questions/items was WTF?), the scrivener asked to meet with us and Takako to try to sort things out. We got the impression from the list that the chair did not like us and did not want us to get our licence.

So, yesterday we all got together and went through the list, exactly what happened at the meeting and our situation. It turns out that the chair was actually on our side and he wanted us to be prepared to answer some very tricky questions that may arise at the explanatory meeting which we have to have with our neighbours. We found out that another guest house in the area had recently had to close down because of numerous complaints from the neighbours in this area, and the issues he gave were those that had been directed at the other guest house.

We also found out that there is a good chance we won’t get our licence until at least mid July…☹. The final application cannot be submitted until we have had the explanatory meeting and agreement of the neighbours is received. Further, because our house is on the boundary with the next community group, we will also be having a second explanatory meeting with them. This will all be happening on Sunday, 3 June, because we have to give two weeks notice before the meetings. It all seems to have become the never ending story.

Such is life.

Cheers for now!

PS  I should also add that our other guests brought generous gifts from Adelaide with them – Jenny & Steven brought tea bags, Twisties, Favourites and Tim Tams 😁, and Colin brought a haul of coffee pods 😃. Thankyou everyone for your generosity and thoughtfulness.

Craig gets caught up in a matsuri while dropping off at the station

 Tasting at a bottle shop

School bus…

 An Australian in the Botanic Gardens

 !Stranger than fiction