Hello all, tis me back at the keyboard again – a lot less shaken, although maybe still a bit stirred. It has now been around five days since the last aftershock (touch wood!), of which we ended up having around 11. There were two bigger ones, both unfortunately during the middle of the night. The first one I mentioned in my last post and happened on the night of the initial earthquake. The second happened over a week later – it was a different kind of quake, being more of a big shunt with some upward movement, rather like something very big had run into the front of our home. All the others were more ‘rattlers’.

I should also say that even though what I wrote last time sounded like Craig was doing an “every man for himself’” run for the back door, he wasn’t, he was just looking around to see what was happening and making sure there was a clear egress. We have all now settled down more, with the kids mostly back to normal (no more big saucer eyes), although they are more affectionate than usual, seeking out comfort. As for myself, I find that I am still a bit oversensitive to rumbles, which we get a lot of here from the trains going through the nearby tunnels.

 Zowie relaxes

Moving on, firstly to the weather, we are now firmly into the summer ‘walking puddle’ heat and humidity. We have had a few thunderstorms in the last week (which makes me happy) and we are getting quite a lot of rain. On some days we are having more than the average rainfall for the whole month of June in Adelaide! The interesting thing is that we have already had a few days over 35, which is somewhat unusual here this early in summer. Other indicators of summer; the dragonflies are out and about and today we heard the first cicadas of the season.

 Dragonfly lands near me

One very positive aspect of the climate here is that plants grow very fast. We have managed to plant out quite a few vegetables and herbs, along with my fledgling hydrangea collection (two plants). Our first crop was sugar snap peas, which were lovely and we were able to use them to feed friends when they stayed earlier this year. Now we are cropping greens of various kinds, along with mint, thyme and shiso (perilla). The broken case that was left behind by one of our friends is working a treat as a veggie patch (thanks Jenny!!) and we have some large pots, some of which we brought from Adelaide (our pottery neighbours have been very interested in them – you don’t get many very large pots like them here). Last night Craig brought in some figs from the tree in the wall and this morning he brought in the first two cucumbers from our plant!

The other ‘hot’ topic is, of course, the #*$@&! Hotel licence. A few of you, dear readers, did ask what was happening about the licence, since I didn’t mention it last time. Well, I have to say it was somewhat deliberate, what with the seismic activities causing some tension, I didn’t want to raise my blood pressure even more by consciously thinking about it! Anyway (gritting teeth), previously we had had our not so BIG meeting with the neighbours and we had met with a commercial waste collector and we thought that we had fully satisfied everything we needed to for the final application. Not so.

We received an email on the Saturday night of the following week, saying we needed to have an actual contract signed with the waste collection company (even though we had been told providing the name of the company would be enough) and then we had to provide details of conversations with our near neighbours (within a 10 metre radius of our property, in all directions) and what their opinions of our business plans were (positive, complaints or no real opinion). As you can imagine, receiving this went down like a lead balloon, especially as we could do nothing to organise the preparation and signing of a contract until Monday morning, at the earliest. I think I went to around 200 over 150!!!!

On the Wednesday, we had the very nice woman and her small tip truck back here again, this time to formalise our agreement in a contract. Once that was completed, we walked around with Takako to try to talk to those close neighbours we hadn’t met or seen. The interesting thing was finding that someone actually did live in the house near our back yard, when we had never seen anyone go into or come out of the house. A youngish and very pallid man answered the door and didn’t really want to interact with us, however Takako managed to pique his interest enough, as he closed the door, that he came outside to see where our house was. Apparently he didn’t realise it was there, or what we were planning (which he didn’t really seem to care about). He appeared to me to be one of the increasing number of people, particularly young men here, who essentially cut themselves off from the world and remain a recluse in their own home – he wouldn’t give us his name. He really was very pale, with almost translucent white skin.

So, having done all this, we duly sent off an email with all the details needed and waited. And waited. We finally received an email some days later indicating the scrivener was going to submit the application as soon as possible, after he returned to Kyoto (from Tokyo). Late last week we finally received an email saying that the application had been submitted and that someone from the regulatory authority would be visiting our minshuku on the following Monday. Also, we had to put up a number of signs in each of the rooms and the ‘common’ area, which were written in English, Chinese and Korean, explaining how not to be a bad guest.

Obviously these signs had been created with Airbnb style accommodation in mind, because they referred to cooking and turning off gas stoves, not drying your clothes on heaters and appropriately disposing of your rubbish, etc. I’d be interested to see if the Four Seasons or the Hyatt have these signs up! Anyway, we did as we were told and yesterday a woman arrived on a pushbike (again – do all public servants have to use pushbikes to do their jobs???? especially in 35 degree heat with over 80% humidity!). She spent most of her time here measuring windows, doors, entryways etc in the rooms, other entryways and the size of our reception counter (there is a minimum size requirement…), to check the plans provided were accurate.

She then asked us if we knew any yakuza (!!!!) and we had to fill out a form with our names, DOB, and what position we held in the company (boss 😊), which Takako kindly did for us as I am very slow at writing kanji. We also had to provide two copies of our booking terms and conditions in English and two copies of instructions of how to get here from the railway station, in English. After all of this, she said we would get our approval in around 42 days…☹. The scrivener said this was fast and seemed pleased. I tried to look pleased.

We had two outings during this period, one was back to Tofukuji to see if the lotus flowers had opened yet and the other was to a temple at Ohara, which is about 45 minutes drive outside of the city, in the mountains. The lotus pond at Tofukuji is very large and occupies the area in front of the large Sanmon gate of the temple. We know that it is a fairly small window during which the lotus are open and I was very keen to see the pond when they were in full bloom. Alas, it was not to be – there was, in fact, one solitary lotus flower open, so I took a photo of that and we are now trying to decide when to return. Hopefully the rain will subside enough later this week, once typhoon number 7 has passed. I only hope that the very heavy rain (rain that periodically stops) due over the next three days won’t damage the flowers. There were a few lotus open on the plants in large pots placed around the temple site, so I did get a few shots of those.

Our other outing required a longish drive out along the river and into the mountainous area of Ohara. What a beautiful area it is; lush and green and rather idyllic, except it gets very cold in winter, with quite a bit of snow. The temple itself is located on the side of a hill and involves a reasonable amount of uphill and stair climbing, but it is definitely worth it. As with most Buddhist temples, there is an intricately designed contemplation garden, which is one of the best ‘green’ gardens I’ve seen and there is a very large wooded area, with part of it being a moss garden, with a pond and waterfall and the other part a huge hydrangea garden. Yes, another one.

This garden, however, is on a massive scale and having the hydrangeas in amongst the trees along with other plants is wonderful. It was another hot and humid day, even out there in the mountains, nonetheless, we absolutely loved it. There also were some quirky things there, like the stone carved heads appearing to pop out of the ground and small statues of monks and other people lining some of the pathways. In some of the areas I could just imagine the fey folk dwelling in amongst the trees and shrubs.

One of the roads leading to the temple was lined with small shops selling local wares and foodstuffs, which was a pleasure to walk along. Had I had some spare cash (something in short supply at the moment) there were many things that would have sorely tempted me. As it was we did buy a few small items, including a handkerchief sized piece of towelling, which is very useful during the mushi mushi months (walking puddle time). We are looking forward to returning to Sanzen-in and seeing it at other times of the year, particularly autumn.

Where are we going to go next? Who knows, but looks like we’ll have some time on our hands for a while!

Cheers

 Advanced Moss Studio?

 Oh, so we don’t float?

 Cairn building in Japan

 Tanuki family

 Golf playing Tanuki