July | 2021 | Addams in Kyoto

Hi all, tis me again, bringing you all the latest about our lives here in Kyoto and other titbits. Firstly, I am officially changing my name to Nostradamus Addams for the purposes of this blog, since my prediction about The Virus in my last post has proven to be fully accurate – sadly. Yes, it seems we are heading into the fifth wave, and we are now officially in the fourth state of emergency. The infection numbers in Tokyo have risen back over 1,000 for the last two days, while here in Kyoto they are on the rise (although we have never had huge numbers here). Just in time for the Olympics.

The good news for Craig and I is that we received our vaccine coupons a few weeks ago (in separate letters), but the bad news is that just after I received mine, and before Craig received his, the prefectural government notified all doctors and others administering the vaccines that they had basically run out of the vaccine and it was unlikely they’d have any more before September! This is apparently the case right around the country, although the small, rural prefectures actually have some left since they received enough to vaccinate all the above 18s initially, and there have been many who haven’t wanted to be vaccinated. Apparently they have been vaccinating the under 18s with the surplus…

Moving on to the weather, the story is wet, wet, wet. There have been few days since the last post that there hasn’t been any rain. Up until yesterday, we had over three weeks where it rained every day. Some days it only rained briefly, while on other days it rained all day. While there was no rain yesterday, it rained again early this morning. We have also had a run of thunderstorms, which, of course, I am loving. Not so poor Miro, who has turned out to be our very own thunderstorm early warning system, now named Miro Ninja Cat because she will suddenly appear from wherever she is running low and fast, up against the wall, to her thunderstorm hiding spot, which is in my clothes cupboard. When she reappears we know it is over.

Another wet day

The clouds of summer

It has been raining a lot right across Japan, with some local flooding and landslides in various places, which seems to happen here every year. Some of the rainfall figures are truly astounding, with one area experiencing 100ml of rain in a one hour period! You just wouldn’t have been able to even walk in that kind of rain. Another place had double the rainfall they normally experience in the whole of the month within the first twelve days of July. We have been avoiding going out when it is raining heavily here.

Luckily we were able to have a couple of outside excursions without getting wet (rain, not sweat, because it has been very humid when it isn’t actually raining and so you do end up damp anyway), though on one occasion we had to go out so that I could suspend my gym membership (finally) and it did rain and we got wet. One thing I have been waiting for, which really lets you know it is summer here, is the cicadas – halfway through summer and no ‘sound of summer’. Well they finally started on the day we went to Uji (see below)! Thank goodness.

One of the outings was to an art exhibition where a neighbour had some works showing. The exhibition had been delayed due to The Virus, but they decided to go ahead during June, and she had invited us to go, so we really wanted to get there. Since we were going to have to walk there (it was around a half hour walk from home, and there is no public transport in the direction of the gallery and very limited parking in the area (as there is anywhere near the city)), we were waiting for a day when it wasn’t raining, the exhibition was open and we had enough time to be able to spend most of a day going out.

We ended up going on the last day, as it turned out, and we enjoyed it, especially since we hadn’t been to any exhibitions for many months. It was a very interesting mix of works, including painting, photography, pottery, mixed media and some little statues (which I loved). Our neighbour’s works were based around printed photographs.

One of our neighbour’s pieces

After the exhibition we decided to walk into town to have some lunch, which we thought should be ok since we were still technically in the state of emergency (in fact the last day of the third ‘lockdown’), so it shouldn’t be too crowded, right? How wrong we were. It was unbelievably crowded in the city centre, with many groups of young people out together and also lots of young families. Most of them seemed to be just there with no particular purpose other than just being in town.

For our other outing I was looking for lotus flowers, since they were just coming into bloom, and I wanted to find somewhere we hadn’t been before. Takako suggested a temple in Uji might be good (we met with her to help with the suspension of my gym membership), and we thought that maybe going somewhere outside of Kyoto city might be good. I did some research about the temple she mentioned and found there was another temple fairly close to that one which was known as the flower temple for its surrounding garden which is made up of many different plants, including lotus.

The latter temple is known as Mimurotoji and was established by Emperor Kōnin in 770CE. Although it was originally established as a palace, it was subsequently converted into the temple (during his time as emperor). As with many temples (and shrines and castles, etc) it has been rebuilt, in this case three times, with the current main structures being built in the early 1800s. Interestingly, the second time it was destroyed was at the hand of Nobunaga. The temple properties and treasures were confiscated until Toyotomi Hideyoshi ascended to power after the death of Nobunaga and restored the temple.

I have to say that the given title of ‘flower temple’ is well justified – it is a truly beautiful place to be and I can imagine that it would be equally stunning when the hydrangeas or azaleas or cherry blossoms or…are in the ascendant. For those who watched Monty Don, this is a classic example of a stroll garden with borrowed greenery from the surrounding hills, which were not part of the temple. We were extra lucky to be there on the day we went because, while it was fairly hot and humid, the giant clouds of summer were around and there was rolling thunder for the entire time we were there. Bliss.

A long entrance

Borrowed scenery in background

Also, some fish!

The other temple we visited was Manpukuji, a much younger temple having been founded in 1661 by the Chinese monk Yinyuan Longqi (known as Ingen in Japan) and his disciple Muyan. Ingen Zenji (Zen master) had been repeatedly invited to visit Japan and finally did in 1655, with many Buddhist monks and others attending his arrival. Having received the devotion of Emperor Go-Mizunoo and Shogun Tokugawa Ietsuna, Ingen Zenji was offered a piece of land in Uji. Instead of returning to China he decided to found Manpukuji and ended up making Japan his permanent home.

The temple structures were built in the traditional Ming Dynasty Chinese architectural style, and the layout of the buildings also follows the Ming Dynasty architectural style, apparently representing an image of a dragon. The main buildings of the temple were constructed from teak, which is also very unusual here and, unlike so many others, the buildings are still the original structures from 1661. It has many other interesting features, including a gyoban, which is a large wooden fish that is, in fact, a wooden percussion instrument which is used by monks and others in the Mahayana Buddhist tradition mainly during rituals involving the recitation of sutras, mantras, or other Buddhist texts.

No flowers…

It was a very interesting place to visit, but it did not have the expected lotus flowers (lucky we went to the other temple!) – the plants were there, but they weren’t in flower. Curiously, we only saw one other person actually walking around in the huge area of the temple while we were there, a monk. It felt like something had happened and we were the only people left, and in this very peaceful place. Again, there was rumbling thunder the whole time we were there. We had planned to have lunch at the temple restaurant which serves shōjin ryōri (Buddhist cuisine which is vegetarian or vegan), but it turned out that you had to have a reservation to eat there, so we went home hungry. Still, all in all a lovely and rather dramatic outing (with thunder sound effects). When we got home we found it had been raining quite heavily in Kyoto – luckily not in Uji.

Well, that’s it for this episode, and I am not going to make any predictions about what happens in the nearish future!!!

Cheers

Vale Maeve