February | 2022 | Addams in Kyoto

Hello, and welcome back to Addams World, where things can happen but not overly much has for the last two years! Most of you will know that Addams World is located within Kyoto city in the lovely eastern hills, along with hundreds of temples and shrines. It is currently still fairly cold here, and we are looking forward to warmer weather in the next month (or so). Setsubun has been and gone and we have undertaken the mamemaki (scattering of lucky roasted soy beans) out the doors, while calling out “Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi!” (literally “Devils out! Fortune in!”) as tradition dictates. This means that, according to the old Japanese calendar, it is now spring.

Being February, it also means that the plum blossom will start blooming at some point during the month – which always cheers me up – and so we have been on the lookout for the early signs in the last couple of weeks. I am finding that it is very important to maintain my focus on having forays and adventures, with specific aims, such as finding plum blossom. The irony has not been lost on me that the whole purpose of moving to Japan and setting up our business here was not only about living in Japan, but having something to keep me occupied and focussed once I retired – something I really wanted to do, that I enjoyed. Here we are, now, after nearly two years during which we have had virtually no guests (I think it now tallies at four people) through no fault of our own, and I am living the life I had intended not to. Still, Kyoto is one of the best places in the world to be superannuated; there are so many places to see and things to do here, even when you are trying to avoid crowded situations.

On that theme, I have always been one to enjoy celebrating things – life, flowers, trees, completing something, etc, so during winter, when it is cold and dreich, it is even more important for me to find things to celebrate (I am not very good at winter). This year, for the very first time, we celebrated Burns Night on 25 January. Having Scottish ancestry (my grandfather Bill’s nickname was Scotty), I have some Scottish items I inherited, including a painting of Rabbie Burns. As coincidence would have it, just prior to Burns Night, we visited the local bottle shop (which just happens to specialise in whisky 😊) and they had some Scottish chips on sale – sea salt and vinegar flavour and haggis flavour!!! We checked them and they were what we call accidentally vegan (not vegan on purpose), so purchased one of each to try.

With that find and an email reminder from a Scottish site that I am subscribed to about Burns Night, it seemed the stars were aligned. We already had our bottle of Aberlour single malt, so that item was ticked off, and I had my Fraser scarf and Scottish brooch, to wear my colours, tick. On the night, we piped in the haggis (chips) via a Youtube video recorded at Edinburgh Castle, and Craig read the Address to a Haggis, the Selkirk Grace and another Rabbie poem, and then we toasted both Rabbie Burns and the haggis. Interestingly, while I was researching Burns Night, I discovered that it has become custom in Scotland to serve a vegetarian/vegan version of the haggis as well as the traditional version.

Och aye the noo!

Returning to the plum blossom hunt, I had seen a photo of a tree with a few blossoms opened on Instagram, so decided to follow that up. So I turned to the electronic oracle and looked up the name of the temple. I found a temple of that name in the Higashiyama hills, about 5km north of us, so we decided to visit on a lovely clear day. It was a nice walk up there, along one of my favourite canals and past Heian Jingu. The temple is known as Konkai Komyo-ji, or Kurodani, and it was first established in 1175 and has continued there, through numerous rebuilds (mostly due to fires). It has a massive cemetery around the main buildings, which is truly beautiful, with a mix of old and new headstones.

Many gravesites have these wooden sticks next to them, and when the wind blows they move, making a clacking noise.

The cemetery is built up the slopes of the hillside, with most of the gravesites facing west, apparently because the Emperor’s palace can be seen from there and there are lovely sunsets over the western mountains. As we were walking through the cemetery we came across one of the monks, and he pointed out that from where we were you could see the skyline of Osaka in the distance (yes, you could…just). Dotted around the grounds of the temple are many statues, mostly of the various Buddhas, of many sizes. Some are bronze but most are stone, and there are some very interesting statues, including a very unusual statue of Goko Shiyui Amidabutsu, a Buddha with very big hair! It looks like he has an afro hairdo, but it is supposed to show that he spent so much time sitting meditating that his hair grew very long.

!!!

There were some nice gardens within the temple precinct, which we had hoped to go into, but they didn’t seem to be open…

What we found, though, was that this was not the temple with the plum blossom trees – there is another temple known as Komyo-ji to the west of this temple but which didn’t come up in my search. The oracle moves (or shows results) in mysterious ways, it seems. Having said that, I was very glad we went there, it was an amazing place. As it happened, while we were walking back down from the temple, we came across another largish temple which I had a very quick peek at to see if there was anything worth looking at and, lo and behold, there was a very old plum blossom tree planted in a quadrangle area, which had some blooms already open. Kismet.

Last weekend we met up with one of the two men who put together the tapas event held here. We had a very nice lunch at a felafel restaurant and then caught a train home, as we had walked the 6km to get there. I decided to walk through the grounds of Chishakuin temple, which is a large temple near our home, to check out their plum trees (the hunt is still on) and quite a few of them had some open blossoms. The sky was intense blue and most of the plum trees there are the dark pink variety, so it looked very nice. Along with this, it was the time of day when they were engaging in chanting, with groups in at least two of the buildings. So, all in all, a wonderful detour. Next week we will continue the hunt…

The chanting halls

Newly painted details

One small item I forgot to mention in my last post, was the new shikishi we bought at the Ebisu festival. This has become a bit of a ritual for us, as there is a good shop which is always open for the festival and the woman who owns it is a very nice person – she always recognises us! This year, we bought a lovely painting of a Silver eye bird in a plum blossom tree. Gorgeous.

Finally, because I know everyone is very keen to see how my Ikebana is going, here are my latest attempts.

Cheers!

Like many other temples and shrines, Komyo-ji has decorated its hand washing area to prevent COVID spread. Is this Queen duck with her male concubine and guards?