Hello one and all and welcome to episode 22 of the recurring “Year 2 in Kyoto” series, avidly (ok, maybe slightly keenly) read by nearly 50 people! I find myself back in front of the keyboard after only 1 week, despite my somewhat impaired state. When I say that, I mean that it is surprising that I have anything to talk about, since we haven’t been doing overly much. I don’t have any more really exciting news (ie, that we have sold the flat, or we have suddenly had an influx of bookings), at this stage, but we remain hopeful of more movement on these in the near future.

The very hot weather really seems to have passed now. Having said that, the estimated max. today is 35C, however, this is the hottest day for a week now, and the seven day forecast is all low to mid 30s. We also have had a couple of good thunderstorms (finally) and some rain. The only slight issue with the rain is that it happened to be the day of the Diamonji bonfires, so we decided not to go and sit on a roof in the rain (also, my toe was hurting due to me doing a little too much the day before…).

We have had one ‘touristy’ outing this week – yesterday we went to see a teamLab installation at a shrine. What’s teamLab, you say? Well, according to their website they are “an art collective, interdisciplinary group of ultratechnologists whose collaborative practice seeks to navigate the confluence of art, science, technology, design and the natural world. Various specialists such as artists, programmers, engineers, CG animators, mathematicians and architects form teamLab.” Hhhhmmm. From my perspective, they do amazing installations and create works of art using light. Very often the installations are interactive, so the viewer can have some input into how the light is used and acts and can sometimes add their own illustrations to the installations.

We saw an ad for this installation at Shimogamo jinja and took the opportunity to visit it, since they don’t have many installations in Kyoto. It is entitled “Resisting and Resonating Ovoids and Forest and Floating, Resonating Spheres – Shimogamo Shrine”. As the title indicates, there are many egg shaped and spherical objects of varying sizes made out of a material that is somewhat soft and rubbery, and these are placed around the shrine, along the road to the shrine through the forest and in the forest itself.

We decided to go to the shrine during the day, so we could see what it was like and get some daytime photos, for reference. The shrine is one of the oldest in Japan, having been founded in the 6^th century. It is situated in a forest named Tadasu no Mori, which encompasses approximately 12.4 hectares and is preserved as a national historical site. It is the last remnant of a primeval forest which is left to grow in its natural state. It is neither planted nor pruned, which is quite unusual in Japan.

What a lovely setting and it is a nice shrine to visit, not just for the teamLab installation. The area around the forest is a very pleasant suburban area too, consisting of especially nice homes and streets – some dishevelled looking places too, however mostly an area that would be nice to live in. We visited a café in the area so I could have a bit of a rest, off my feet (toe) and to wait for the evening to draw nigh. It was in a bookstore and had a somewhat dreamy, 1970s feel to it – different to Starbucks!

After this, we went to eat at a vegan ramen restaurant located nearby, known as Towzen (and Mamezen – not sure why it has two names). Some of our guests had been there previously and said it was very good, so we thought we would take the chance to try it while we were in the area. There are not overly many items on the menu but what we had was very nice and not too expensive. It is worth the travel to get there, just for the fact that vegan, or even vegetarian, ramen is a very unusual thing here.

 the entry to Towzen

 a local spy watching us eat…

We didn’t rush our meal, because we thought we would have time to get back to the shrine and then wander around comfortably in the warm evening. We didn’t expect overly many people there because it wasn’t the first night, it was a Monday night and just after the end of Obon. It was a nice night, with a very pleasant breeze. So we ambled back to the shrine, to find a massive queue with thousands of people waiting to get in…I have to admit, I was tempted to just turn around and go home, assuming we would be in the queue for at least an hour, but we stayed, and waited.

As it happened, the queue moved reasonably quickly and were in after around 30-40 minutes. Unfortunately, some of the installation was not working, with the first 200 metres, or so, in darkness. In the distance, though, you could see coloured lighting in the trees overhead. The race to get photos once we reached the lit area was fairly frenetic and we had to wait our turn to get any photos without multiple people in front of the giant eggs in the forest.

The changing colours and the egg shapes made the forest look somehow otherwordly, more like a place where very large creatures were putting their eggs for incubation and the music being played added to the effect. It would be wonderful to wander around there with fewer people – significantly fewer – but then large crowds are generally a fact of life here. I had to be very careful in the dark to make sure I didn’t end up with my toe being knocked or trodden on.

Once past the forest walk, through the tori into the shrine compound, the eggs which were all corralled during the day had been spread out. It really was ethereal, despite all the people and the shrine gates and buildings. The giant romon gate looked even more spectacular lit up and with giant, coloured eggs in front. Within the gated area there were many giant spherical shapes, which floated above the ground attached to weights on the ground. It was interesting watching people interacting with these shapes, like a playground for young and old. Some of the eggs and the spheres changed colour when they were bumped or hit, while all of the others changed colour in a more regular way.

It really was worth the queuing and the unexpected extra time I spent standing and walking (which meant I was in a fair amount of pain by the time we got home) and the ¥1,000 entrance fee. I’m glad we went and that I can rest today!!!!

That’s all for now – oh, just one thing I forgot, we received some flowers yesterday, just before we left for the shrine, from our lawyer wishing us the all best now that we have our licence. A thoughtful and considered surprise – most of the flowers and leaves in the arrangement are from Australia, including some gumnuts!

Cheers!!!!!

Not sure if this dog is famous

 ??? Not sure

  Reid????

 Before

 After – slightly different angle…

 Crepe Myrtle time

…and in breaking news, Vegan Minshuku Sanbiki Neko is now a fully licenced accommodation facility. Yes, in a record breaking 40 days, approval has been granted to the extremely grateful Addams Family to now run their minshuku as a fully fledged operation.

An email was received just before midnight on Friday night from the scrivener informing them of this momentous outcome – it was in Japanese, but they were able to ascertain the general gist. At around 5am on Saturday morning, a full English translation of the email was received, confirming this result.

Hello and welcome dear readers to possibly the shortest post yet! We have been doing even less than before, due to a certain phalanx injury, so I am mainly reporting on the above headline news.

It’s funny, though, as much as I want to be really excited about this news (just as I wanted to be really excited about finally selling our house in Adelaide) because it has taken so long and been quite fraught, what I am really feeling is relief. So, now there is one final hurdle to completing our plans and fully settling into our new lifestyle and that is the sale of our flat (so we can buy all the things we need to finish the fitout of the minshuku, and buy ourselves a full sized fridge 😊). We also now have to start really pushing ourselves out into the market. We already have three reviews on Google, which is a good start.

One question that springs to mind – why did the scrivener send us an email so late at night? Was he still working? I can’t imagine that he received the news himself just before he sent the email, but then maybe the public servants having been doing a lot of overtime to get through the work…hhhmmmm, hard to imagine them working that late, though. Funny we should receive approval on the day our newest friends left to go to Tokyo. Also, Saturday was the anniversary of Craig arriving here permanently.

Our last two groups of guests truly were lovely people and we are staying in touch with both of them. In fact, the family of four have invited us to stay with them in London if we ever go back to the UK. We are also now friends on FB with the couple (well, Craig is, as I have no presence there).

On the weather front (!), another typhoon passed through the other day and this time it turned north east, so we did not get any of the stormy weather here. It did, however, finally give us a little relief from the heatwave, and we are now experiencing some cooler days below 35C (although still above 32 so far). What has also changed is the humidity, ie it is now becoming more humid. In essence it is now becoming more like the summer of last year. Ironically, we are now hoping for some rain!!!

This week is O-Bon week, during which Japanese people honour the spirits of their ancestors. It is a Buddhist-Confucian custom which has evolved in Japan into a family reunion holiday, during which people return to ancestral family places and visit and clean their ancestors’ graves. It is also believed the spirits of ancestors revisit household altars. It has been celebrated in Japan for more than 500 years and traditionally includes a dance, known as Bon-Odori.

(2 photos from the internet)

The culmination of the O-Bon festival, which is on 16 August, involves five giant bonfires being lit on the mountains surrounding Kyoto city, known as Diamonji. This signifies the moment when the visiting spirits, who are said to visit this world during O-Bon, are believed to be returning to the spirit world and the fires are lit to help guide them back. We will be going out to watch Diamonji on Thursday night – a local school allows locals in to sit on the rooftop to watch the fires, so it’s not too far for me to walk.

I leave you now with a photo of a mascot we ran across the other day, outside the supermarket.

 A duck-like ice cream??

Cheers!

The long, HOT summer…

Hi all, yes, it’s me again, after another longer than expected sabbatical. This heatwave is turning into the never ending story, or so it seems. Apart from two days which were below 35C (although, above 32C), it has now been four weeks since the heatwave started, with every day (barring those two) being over 35C.

One thing that hot days do bring are colourful sunsets and so I have indulged in a few photos of sunsets. It is quite nice having a balcony that faces west, even though we can’t see the horizon for the buildings near us, I can look out and enjoy a colourful sunset in the ever so slightly cooler evenings. Not quite like a good sunset photo at the beach, just a little bit of fun.

I also took some photos from the balcony of our courtyard area behind the carport – yes, we haven’t been doing much and I am itching to get out and take some more photos…maybe in the next week, or so, when the heat finally does moderate a bit.

Something I hadn’t mentioned in my last post, was that some people here were saying what we needed was a typhoon to come through and push away the intense high that was keeping the weather hot. Well, we did get that typhoon just over a week ago, on Saturday night. The only thing was that it crossed the east coast, and then passed directly over us, still as a strong typhoon. This is quite unusual here, so far inland.

When it hit, the winds were literally howling and the rain was being pushed sideways across the rooftops. While I like storms, I am not a big fan of strong winds, so this was a bit unsettling for me. The good news is that, again, the house took it quite well (better than me!). The not so good news is that, while the heat did reduce for those two days mentioned above, once it was gone, the heat returned as if nothing had happened.

As of today, there is another typhoon heading towards Japan, from the same direction. It appears as though it is again going to cross the coast as a typhoon – whether it continues our way, who knows? Will the intense heat finally move on, who knows? From what we’ve been seeing in the news, heatwaves are impacting large parts of the northern hemisphere, particularly in Europe and the UK.

From my perspective we have now had all of the four elements covered: earth (earthquake), air (typhoon), fire (heatwave) and water (flooding rains). What I haven’t had enough of this year is thunderstorms. Perhaps my writing about it will bring some on??!!

In terms of resultant damage from all of this onslaught, Kyoto has got off relatively lightly. We did notice at least one house nearby which had it’s roof covered by a blue tarpaulin (they’re called blue sheets here) following the earthquake, and a cement block wall on an old building down the road is now sitting at an angle (with witches hats in front to keep people some distance away). Following the typhoon, another of the older buildings nearby has had some cement sheets fall off, and looks rather like losing some more (with witches hats below to keep people some distance away).

On the minshuku front, we haven’t had any news either way yet, so we’re hoping no news is good news and that we’ll get our licence in the near future. Meanwhile, we have had some British guests staying with us over the last week – a lovely couple from Wednesday last week and a family of four arrived on Friday. The couple left us yesterday and the family is staying until the end of this week.

On the Friday morning (the day the family arrived), I had a slight mishap. After I feed the kids in the morning, I have been putting Ziggy outside for a while, until the heat really sets in for the day. As I was going out to bring Ziggy back in (at about 7:45), I managed to kick the leg of one the outdoor chairs and unfortunately broke my toe. Timing…when we have six guests staying, the largest group we’ve had here, my duck-footedness brings me undone. Now, you’d think that given I have walked like this for most of my life, I would take into account that my feet don’t point straight ahead. Apparently not enough.

So, I am now hobbling around, serving breakfasts and doing other jobs, with a grey/purple toe. On the positive side, it is the fourth toe, next to the little toe, so I can walk (hobble) without putting pressure on it. Also, because our minshuku is a ‘shoes off’ facility, I am able to walk around barefooted. On the Saturday, we had to go to Aeon Mall to get some supplies for the kids (so they won’t attack us for food!!! 😊) and some other supplies, so I had to put on some shoes. To try to protect my toe, I bound the toes each side to the affected toe and I wore a pair of Japanese style thongs. Nonetheless, it was a rather painful experience, so I am now keeping any outings to an absolute minimum.

On Saturday night there was a fireworks display broadcast live on tv, which provided a pleasant distraction. Again, feeling the need to take photos, I took to the camera and got some shots from the tv. The fireworks displays seem to be somewhat different here, with many short bursts of pyrotechnics and then fairly long gaps between. I’m not sure if there are different groups providing each of the individual bursts, or they just don’t set up all of the fireworks beforehand.

Cheers for now!!!

The sound of summer – with Ziggy slightly perturbed!

I got carried away…

My Purple Prince!

My Hydrangea in flower – again