Happy New Year!!!!! Hello and welcome to 2019, the year of the pig, or inoshishi as it is called here (meaning wild boar). So, yes, I am a wild boar instead of a pig…and I’ll leave that as it is.

In terms of the weather here, well it’s winter and unsurprisingly it has been cold. Most of the days in the past two weeks have been sub 10C, with most nights hovering just above 0C. One unexpected event, this early in the season, was a fall of snow a few days after xmas. It wasn’t much here, just a dusting, but further north in our prefecture and those nearby had some heavy falls.

Last time I wrote, we had two lots of guests staying here – four people – who all left us on 24 December. It was certainly nice to have some guests late in December; a brother and sister meeting here before xmas (one from the UK and the other from Hong Kong) and an older Swiss couple (which, by the way, was a little spooky, initially, after our previous experience) one of whom works for the Swiss consulate in Tokyo. All lovely people.

The day after they all left, being xmas day, we went for our traditional Indian lunch at Ajanta restaurant. Delicious as always, and made even more enjoyable by the ever streaming Bollywood music videos. I am a bit of a sucker for Bollywood music and dance. After lunch, we went to the Kitano Tenmagu market to meet up with Takako, if only briefly, as she was not going to be there until 4:00pm, and we had to get home to feed the kids (it takes a long time to get from there back home). The market was going to continue into the evening, as a special event. This was the first time we had been to this market, having only been to the Toji and craft markets before.

Not tea, spicy carrot and tomato soup. Yum!!!

We had a bit over an hour to kill before she arrived and so we looked around the market. It was a huge market with new and secondhand stalls, along with many food stalls. Being a secondhand items addict, we spent most time at these stalls. I really wanted to find a shikishi, which are small to medium sized pieces of cardboard used for calligraphy, paintings, etc. I had previously bought a circular frame from the craft museum, which is designed to hold shikishi, so was keen to find something there. We looked through many in a number of stalls and in the end found one we both liked and thought appropriate for our minshuku.

Once home, we made toasties and watched Love Actually, another xmas tradition. I can never get enough of watching Bill Nighy playing an inappropriate and ageing rock star. Hugh Grant plays, as always, Hugh Grant 😊. I am also a fan of lobsters at the Nativity!

While we don’t exchange gifts for xmas, surprisingly we did receive a xmas present this year, as the prize for the Nature’s Charm competition arrived shortly after xmas – and what a gift! We didn’t know exactly what we would be getting, so when a largish box arrived we were surprised. Inside were ten items, all different and all vegan. We are still working out how to make best use of all the items, having started simply by eating strawberries dipped in the chocolate sauce.

On the Saturday after xmas, we attended a vegan cooking class we had been invited to by Sakiko to watch the class and eat some of the resultant foods. It was held in a 300 year old Samurai house fairly near Kyoto station, called Kyoto Concierge Salon. BentoYa rents space in this house every Saturday to run the classes. Other classes and experiences are also held in this venue, such as the tea ceremony, ikebana classes, kimono rental, and even a traditional dance class.

We had a fantastic time, meeting the owner of BentoYa, who was there from Tokyo for the year end class and the owner of the venue, Shinzo, and his fiancé Serena, watching the class, meeting a family of four from Sydney who were doing the class and getting to eat some ramen and gyoza produced in the class. Yum!

It seems that the BentoYa people are keen to partner with us and, as it happens, so is the owner of the venue, who invited both himself and his fiancé to our place to see the minshuku and try our breakfast! Highly unusual behaviour for a Japanese person, but we were delighted they did!!! They loved our minshuku and enjoyed the breakfast and made some good suggestions to help us with marketing. They also invited us to try some of their classes and experiences, as well as giving us two gifts (one as we left their venue and one on arrival at our home).

A beautiful handmade tissue box cover

A shamoji from a shrine they visited for new year

In a return to an old segment – the wonderful world of tv in Japan – I just had to mention a programme we saw the other night. I have to say we often see really interesting segments and programmes on tv, many of which lead us to interesting places and sometimes things or people. In this case, the programme was about a female Japanese artist named Toko Shinoda. She was born in 1913 and is currently still alive and fairly well – quite lucid, in fact, and says she still puts brush to paper every day.

  At work years ago

 Shinoda now

She began as a calligrapher and had her first solo exhibition in 1936. By 1945 she was producing more abstract forms, departing significantly from the strictness of calligraphy. In 1956 she moved to New York, after successfully exhibiting there. While living there she was exposed to abstract expressionism, including the work of Jackson Pollock, which had an impact on her work. She has been prolific over the years and her work can be found in galleries and private collections around the world. If I had the money…

…and on that note, here endeth my first blog for the year. I hope you all have a wonderful year, and let’s hope things move in a much more positive way this year.

Cheers!

Gambolling inoshishi

Found while out on a walk 

 Last vestiges of colour

 Then, on the ground

Haven’t had anything kawaii for a while!

Glorious sunny (if cold) days on the Kamogawa

A very small guest under our verandah (hard to get a good photo, was spooked easily)

Thank goodness for the under floor heating!