Hello all! I have finally returned to the keyboard again, to talk about life as I have experienced it since last we spoke. It has been a long time, I know, and I don’t have too many excuses, although I have not been idle. I have spent some time getting my bookkeeping house in order and am now up to date and ready for tax time, which is nigh. In fact, the company’s tax year ends at the end of Feb, mainly because it was created early in March…but, enough of that!

Last time, I recall I mentioned that I thought the snowfall we had (with photos) was likely the last of the season – all I can say is ‘famous last words’. While there hasn’t been a heavy(ish) fall since, it did snow on three days in the week following my assertion. Perhaps my statement was taken as a challenge by the weather gods 😊. Since that week, we haven’t had a day below 10C, which is very nice. I have even been out for a walk a few times recently without a puffy jacket on!!!

Spring is definitely in the air, and the weather people are suggesting that the cherry blossom will be early again this year, perhaps as early as the middle of March. Right now the plum blossom is out, which we have made an effort to view. Around the middle of February we went to Kitano Tenmangu jinja, which has about 300 plum blossom trees in its grounds, to check how far along they were but it really was early days then.

Prior to going there we went to a vegan restaurant which is nearby and which many of our guests had been to and said was very good, called Itadakizen. The menu was not overly large but they had daily specials, so we chose one dish from the daily specials and one from the menu. I won’t say I was disappointed, but it didn’t really live up to the hype for me. After lunch, we walked to the shrine through an area known as Youkai Street (literally monster street).

As legend has it, thousands of years ago, after a big seasonal cleanout, many old items were thrown out. After they were abandoned, the ‘antiques’ had a gathering (as old items do…). Apparently they were very angry and decided to turn into youkai (monsters) and hundreds of them then invaded what was the northern most area of the old Kyoto (which is known as Rakuchu). Many (many) years later, the owners of shops on this street started to construct monsters as a celebration of the legends. Some of them are based on Japanese folklore, while others are just a mishmash of things put together to look like a monster.

 ??? Not sure…

We had seen a story about this street on tv (as so often we find out about things and sites around Kyoto!) and thought we’d take the opportunity to see the street, since we were in the area. It is a fun area, though some of the monsters do look a little the worse for wear. Will that make them even more angry? Lucky we are on the other side of Rakuchu!

The blossom at Kitano Tenmagu was only in the very early stages of blooming, so we decided to make a return visit after a couple of guests left us, later in February. So, on 25 February we returned there, although we didn’t actually take any note of the date until we arrived at the shrine. Now, for those of you who have been here before, you may realise the significance of that date and venue – for those who don’t, a large market is held at this shrine on the 25^th of every month. You may recall we went there on xmas day last year.

As a result, while I thought there may be quite a few people there to see the blossom, there were, in fact, many people there both for the viewing and the market. Anyway, it turned out the blossom was still to fully develop, so there weren’t as many people as I initially feared walking through the garden area. It was an absolutely glorious day, one of those days I wasn’t clad in puffiness. The temperature was around 18C and the sky was a really intense blue, which worked particularly well with the pink of many of the plum blossom trees.

We also took advantage of the market to buy another shikishi, to complete our seasonal set (the frame is such that they are easily interchanged), and I bought another pair of the fabulously warm and comfortable fleecy lined Japanese style pants. I am now fully kitted out for cold weather 😊.

After we left there, we went to another vegan restaurant which we were told was very good; Vegetarian Ren a Taiwanese vegan restaurant (not sure why it’s called Vegetarian…). This time, the hype was true to word. The food was fantastic and on top of that it was also very reasonably priced. We liked it so much, we went back there yesterday for lunch with Takako. Yum!!!!

During this period, we have also had some local visitors to our humble abode, who we had invited here. The first was a woman who goes by the moniker ‘diethelper’ on Instagram. She lives in Kyoto and has made it her mission to go around to restaurants, cafes, bars and hotels to talk to them about vegetarianism and veganism and how they can make their establishments more veg ‘friendly’. She also highlights those establishments that are fully vegan/vegetarian. I found her on Instagram and added a comment to one of her posts, which she immediately responded to and said she’d like to meet us.

So, we invited her over for morning tea and showed here around. She took many (many) photos and some video and we also talked about how Kyoto is gradually becoming much more veg friendly. She was the one who put us on to Vegetarian Ren. After her visit, she put up two posts about our place, with many photos, plus video and a lot of description, which was wonderful. One other thing she told us is that the universities here (of which there are quite a few and well respected, at that) often have visiting academics and there are a number who are veg, which the universities aren’t quite sure how to deal with. She asked if we would mind if she gave them our details…😊.

Before I sign off, I thought I would talk about advertising on tv here. It is a different experience overall compared to watching ads in Australia (and probably many other countries). There are many times when we aren’t quite sure what the ads are about – but then that was the case in Australia, at times – but what I really like here are the characters or, perhaps, youkai that are used in advertisements. It’s sort of like the mascots which are used for a particular company, or city or anything else really, but on ads, they can be much more anthropomorphic, or people can morph into something else entirely.

I read an article about Japanese advertising written by an academic who studies advertising, and he said the difference is that, while ‘western’ ads try to sell a concept, Japanese ads try to sell the essence of the product. I’m not sure exactly what some of the essences are, but I do like watching their ads much more, on the whole, than the ads in Australia. One example is the ongoing series of ads for Aflac, which is a company that sells life insurance, and all of it’s ads involve a talking white duck. They are really good ads to watch with the duck doing many things, including yoga, but there is very little mention of life insurance. The duck even has it’s own Facebook page.

There are many much weirder creatures, and I managed to capture a couple:

 A drum playing plum…

I think this is about encouraging acceptance of credit cards

So, that’s all for now

Cheers!

 My kind of shop!

Me blending in with the trees

A local Shiba enjoying the sun

Illustrating the pine pollen measure…

Just more blossom shots

A very different kind of flower