Hello and Happy New Year to you all!!! Yes, that’s right, 2020 has ended! Hopefully this year will be a whole lot better than last year, and the spectre of The virus will dissipate and we can get back to some sort of ordinary life again. Now, when I say ordinary, I do not mean dull and boring, but rather living which does not involve having to be so very careful all the time and where we can do more of what we want to do, such as have guests staying with us and being able to go to ballet classes without a mask on.

Before that dream begins, I still have one last month of 2020 to review which also happens to be the first month of my fifth year here. This time also happened to be cold, so cold that we actually had some (a little) snow before the end of the year. It started falling during the night of the 16^th into the 17^th, so we awoke to a sprinkling on the plants. That night, at around 3:40am we also had a smallish earthquake – around magnitude 3.5 – and the epicentre was very close to us, about 1.5km north. This was the first earthquake we have had that was centred north of us, so quite unusual.

I was awake at the time (I think Miro had awoken me) and then my bed started swaying (remember it is on the floor), and I heard the noise, and this lasted for around 10 seconds. It actually woke Craig up, which is also unusual 😊. I have recently come to create my own earthquake scale, somewhat different to the standard magnitude type – rather more descriptive. There are four basic types (so far), the Ripple, the Shunt, the Swayer and the Rattler/Shaker.

The Ripple is fairly mild and feels like being in a boat with water rippling underneath. The Shunt is very fast and feels like a truck has slammed into the house. The Swayer is a level up in length and feels like being rocked, such as in a hammock. The Rattler/Shaker ranges from innocuous to very nasty; from glasses rattling lightly together to the lights swaying, pictures tipping and things falling down or over (including buildings, in the extreme), and can keep going for quite a while.

We have had a few more light falls of snow since, including yesterday morning. Elsewhere, mainly along the west coast of Japan, the falls have been very heavy, with cars, trucks and vans being stuck on highways for up to three days. Niigata has been hardest hit, and a number of people have died as a result of being buried in snow, mostly via trying to get snow off their roofs and it falling on top of them all at once.

Not very heavy here…

The weather has been very cold, at times. We have had nearly a week where most days were 5C or less maxima, including one day of just over 2C, and many nights sub-zero, with the coldest bottoming out at -5C. Most of the sub-zero nights have been clear, and hence no snow. We have been careful not to use too much power to stay warm, and end up wearing thermals and lined clothing at home, while puffy coats, gloves, scarves and beanies are de rigueur outside. I also have a pair of puffy leggings, called Poodlegs, which are fantastic when it’s really cold.

In the bus…

As you can imagine, we have been doing more things at home, rather than going out (it’s cold and the Covid numbers are up). For xmas day we organised a ‘xmas orphans’ repast (late afternoon into the evening). We invited four people, though on the day two of them didn’t make it, so the four of us here had a lot of food to ourselves. What a feast 😊! We also had one friend over for new year’s eve, although we didn’t quite make it to midnight…

We have also been watching more tv, including our regular “Nightmare Before Christmas” and “Love Actually” before xmas. We also watched a fantastic Godzilla movie recently, which was being aired on local tv (no English), called “Invasion of Astro-Monster”, which included Rodan and King Gidorah, along with some aliens. Even though we couldn’t understand exactly what they were saying, we could understand enough of what was going on to make it great fun to watch. It was made in 1965 and as a result also included some great design.

Aliens

Spaceships

Aliens taking Godzilla

Godzilla sees Gidorah

Godzilla trashes

Rays firing at aliens

Rodan down

Godzilla gets Gidorah

Something else we also happened across on tv was the opening of the new full-sized Gundam statue/robot exhibition facility. The robot has been built at a toymaker’s factory in Yokohama and on 19 December took it’s first steps outside. It is 18 metres tall and there are decks at 15 and 18 metres to get up close views, along with lots of paraphernalia for sale. It costs ¥1,650 to enter the facility – not cheap, but for fans no doubt all worth it. Watching the comperes at the opening, well known and popular males in their 20s and 30s, they were very excited to be there (they were almost giggling), so I suspect it will be popular.

We have ventured outside a few times, but mainly to go shopping. We did make an effort on New Year’s day to go to one of the local shrines, to plead with Kamisama (the deities) to get rid of the virus 😊, soon. We also took a long walk a couple of days ago, up and over the mountain behind Kiyomizu-dera, with a friend. It was a cold day, overcast initially, but otherwise good weather for walking.

Silliness on the path

We descended from the mountain near Heian shrine, very close to another shrine which I had wanted to visit. As it turned out, it is a shrine associated with the deity Ebisu and the Ebisu festival was being held around Kyoto. Ebisu is one of the Shichifukujin (Seven Gods of Luck), the deity of fishing, wealth, and fortune. This is the first major festival of the year, and is centred around January 10^th, Ebisu’s birthday.

Interesting display – we think they were lanterns at the back

Inside a small museum there

Rubber ducks sitting atop ice in the hand washing bowl, possibly to stop people washing – yes it was cold!

Ebisu shrine

In the past we have gone to the main festival at the Ebisu shrine in the Gion, however, this year we decided not to go due to the current increase in the virus numbers (not sure if it’s the third wave, or whether we are now entering a fourth wave). As a result it was quite opportune that we ended up at a related shrine, so we could ask Ebisu for luck in our business, and to buy a new lucky charm for the year.

After leaving the shrine we headed north, via Okazaki park towards a restaurant to get some lunch. Nearing the park/Heian shrine precinct, we started seeing a lot of young women dressed in kimono (very expensive looking kimono at that) and young men mostly dressed in suits. As we got closer we realised there were many hundreds of them accumulated in this area, and then we remembered it was a public holiday for the ‘Comin of Age’ celebration, for all those who have reached or will reach the ‘age of maturity’ (20 years old) between the 2^nd of April of the previous year and the 1^st of April of the current year, to help them celebrate the fact they are now considered adults.

Most of the celebrations had been cancelled around Japan, but Kyoto had decided to go ahead, despite the threat of the virus. As we walked through the enormous crowd, it really was a fantastic spectacle seeing all these beautifully dressed young people and you could see the fun they were having with all their friends. The sun had come out by then and it really was a feast for the eyes.

Unfortunately the restaurant we had wanted to go to was closed, being a public holiday, so we had to walk a bit further – I’m not sure how many kms we had walked by then, but it must have been well over 5kms including climbing up then down – however, the next nearest vegan friendly restaurant was open, and we had falafel for lunch, suitably distanced from anyone. We then caught a nearly empty train home. The following day was my ballet class day (which I’m doing at home at the moment…), and I have to say my muscles tired a little more easily than usual during the class, but the stretching felt good 😊.

Before I sign off, I should mention that we had a guest stay with us for two nights just after New Year. He was from Hawaii, with some Japanese heritage, and was in Japan early last year when the first state of emergency was called for the virus. Looking back, the numbers were so low then, amazing how the government has taken so long to call the second emergency, given the size of the numbers now…

Anyway, he has been caught in Japan, unable to get home, from March last year. Since that time he has bought a small bicycle and some lightweight camping gear, and has ridden pretty much all the way around Japan (excluding Okinawa). He is vegan and decided he wanted to spoil himself by staying here – he has spent very little on accommodation, at times sleeping under bridges where homeless people are.

When he arrived, he had a hat and face mask on, so it came as a surprise next morning at breakfast to see that he had a longish, thick head of hair, including a long beard! He hasn’t had a haircut or shaved since he has been here 😊. He was a lovely person, as nearly all of our guests seem to be, and it was a pleasure to have him here. He is currently preparing to leave Japan later this week, after having a test to show he is Covid negative. Wonderful to have a guest staying here again.

Well, that’s almost it for now. Just one quick nod to one of our pottery neighbours who invited us to come see some of the things he had been making recently, after I made a few comments about how beautiful they were on Instagram. In particular, he had made some ceramic speaker casings (believe it or not), and was obviously very proud of them. He had finished installing the speaker fittings and as we entered his workshop he put on a CD so we could hear them. Interestingly he chose the Phantom of the Opera, which made the whole thing even more spectacular! We had been wondering what they would sound like with a ceramic surround, but actually they were good, and very expensive at over $1,000, but then they are covered in gold leaf…

Picture from Instagram

Cheers

The end of Autumn

After Halloween toilet paper, there’s xmas toilet paper…

Ok, so it won’t go on Instagram

Interesting xmas decoration in the building where my gym is

All the xmas cakes for cats and dogs…

Display of a festival float in our local council building. All the major pieces are ceramic, including the huge platter

Tanuki at a local sake shop – one can’t see thanks to mask and the other has a beak mouth reminiscent of a kappa

Miro and Zowie up close

Zowie gets attention (not often you can see my natural hair colour…yes, it’s mid-brown, not black)

Beautiful obi display

Love the duck with the helmet, the one with the eye patch and the sleepy one

At the shrine – toilet rules

Partially frozen water at a local temple

Godzilla ice skating on our mochi bowl

Some early blossom buds – already!

Not much in the way of flowers at the moment

Godzilla doing his happy dance after defeating Gidorah