February | 2019 | Addams in Kyoto

That time again? What, it’s past that time? Three weeks????? What have I been doing?

The answer to the latter, is not that much, really. We have been quite hibernal, in the sense that we have been staying home more than we usually would, going out mainly for the essentials, including me going to gym (which is now an essential). Despite this, we have managed to do some marketing for our minshuku and I (finally) caught up with my book keeping (sigh).

Now, to the weather – frankly, it has mostly been quite wintry, with the occasional day above 10C. The temperature actually reached 14C the other day, seemed almost warm!!! We had another fall of snow late last month, this time a bit heavier; it snowed on and off all night. We, of course, got plenty of photos, especially since it is likely that was the last of the snow this season.

As it happens, the night it snowed, we had a booking at the restaurant that I mentioned in my last post. The owner had contacted us to market their wholesale food service (felafel, etc) and the restaurant, so we decided to visit the restaurant. We told them this in an email indicating we would be buying their product for our guests. They replied asking us if we wanted a reservation made for Saturday night!!! Nothing like direct action for positive outcomes!

We walked there, which took around 30 minutes. It wasn’t windy and the snow wasn’t too heavy, so it was quite a pleasant walk. The owner arrived after we were seated and once he found out we were there, came over and joined us for dinner 😊. The food was good and the surroundings were quite pleasant, with an eclectic mix of decorations and furniture, including some very large lounge furniture. Quite comfortable for a restaurant/bar, which it is.

The owner (in grey)

On 3 February, we celebrated Setsubun, which is officially the day before the beginning of spring. It is complemented by a ritual called mamemaki, which is meant to cleanse all the ‘evil’ of the previous year and drive away disease-bringing ‘evil spirits’ for the new year (it was originally new year’s eve at this time here). I carried out the mamemaki this year, not traditional for a female but I am a pig and it is my year, so…

Anyway, I threw the roasted soybeans out each of the doors of our home, calling out ‘Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi! – basically meaning ‘Demons out! Luck in!’. We also each ate our age plus one of the remaining soybeans. Along with this, it is customary in the Kansai region to eat uncut makizushi (rolled sushi) called ehō-maki (which literally means lucky direction roll) in silence on Setsubun while facing the year’s lucky compass direction, which is determined by the zodiac animal of the year. So, Craig made us some makizushi with cucumber and avocado for dinner which we ate while standing facing ENE.

During the day we walked over to Yasaka jinja, to see the Setsubun festivities there. I bought a bag of soybeans, for good luck, and then stood in line for around 20 minutes waiting to select a number which determined what prize you would win with the ticket they give you. I only bought one bag and hence received only one ticket. Many other people were buying multiples – a good money maker for the shrine! Unfortunately, this time I only won a bottle of soft drink.

It’s a straw turtle

After that we went over to wait for the Shinto priests to come out for the celebratory activities, which includes throwing packets of soybeans (similar to the ones I bought) out to the gathered crowd. It is considered very lucky to catch one of these bags. We weren’t sure what time the formal festivities commenced, so we waited for around 15 minutes until Craig tired of this and went to find out what the start time was. It turned out it was another 30 minutes away and Craig wasn’t overly keen to stand there that long. I decided that, as standing in a restive and growing crowd for 45 minutes in total was going to be increasingly uncomfortable, I might as well pay my respects to kami and leave.

On the way home we passed by Entokuin, a small temple associated with Kodaiji, which we had never visited. So we decided to take the opportunity to go in there when it was fairly quiet. Entokuin was built for Nene, the wife of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, by her nephew. According to the board out front, Nene had this temple built in 1605, 10 years after she had Kodaiji built post his death. She lived in Entokuin for 19 years and apparently visited Kodaiji every day to pray for her husband. A lovely place and very peaceful, with some beautiful fusuma-e (paintings on the sliding doors (fusuma)) painted by Hasegawa Tohaku in the 1500s. Many things were taken from Momoyama castle to Entokuin, presumably these fusuma were included in that.

The white dragon is Toyotomi and the cormorants his subordinates

Before I sign off, I thought I would mention my visits to the gym this week. I decided it was time to start going to two classes each time I visited there, since it takes around 30 minutes to travel there, rather than going more often. On Tuesday, there is a ballet class before Zumba, so that seemed opportune as I feel I am now getting back into the swing of ballet (or should that be spin?). This class is run by a different instructor and is a little harder than Friday’s class, but was good. The instructor can also speak some English, so she went out of her way to tell me things in English, which was mostly unnecessary, but she is trying to be helpful.

On Friday, after ballet class, there is a “theatre Jazz” class (actually written in Japanese style English “shiata-JAZZ). I wasn’t exactly sure what this would entail, but I have never done Jazz before and thought it might be fun. Turns out half the class was stretching and limbering up, then the other half hour was spent doing a dance to ‘Another Day of Sun’ from La La Land. Most of the people in the class already knew the routine, and I was flat out trying to learn it! It was quite fast and doing moves which I had no experience of. None-the-less, I did enjoy it and will go back next Friday to try to get it right 😊.

You can never have too many opportunities to dance.

Cheers!