Konnichiwa, hello, guten tag and bonjour! Here we all are, nearly half way through the year and for us, on the business front, not much has changed. Still waiting for the borders to re-open, still hoping we’ll get through this. We have, of course had something of a distraction recently, with our young family group in the dining room, watching their progress, keeping the food up to mum, cleaning (as best we can), and adjusting the living quarters without upsetting mum too much (which I have a few times).

The balcony addition

Partial view of the tent

Mum watches, on the ready to ‘go for me’ if I make any more changes

Certainly we have needed this distraction because, apart from not having any guests, the weather has been rather drab recently – many grey days, with rain on many of them. It is May now, my favourite month of the year, weather-wise, but not this year. I mean, we have had some nice days – sunny and warm – but they have been few, so far. After last year, when it rained for most of the summer, with so little sun most of our vegetable plants came to nothing, I can only hope that we are getting the overcast days out of the way now.

Anyway, back to mum and our grandchildren, they have come along in leaps and bounds (that is literally how they are now 😊). They are five weeks old as of tomorrow and are now very active and very interested in what is around them. Once they started looking outside of the box, and were moving around a bit more (in a wobbly kind of way), we created a verandah for them with soft lining and added a step on the outside so they could get back into the box. They liked this and it was Zara, the white, orange and tabby girl, who was first out.

Zara (on the left) looking out, making plans…

I should mention that we are pretty sure we have three girls and one boy – the girls are; Zara, Akashi (the dark kitten with the red stripe on one side of her face) and Yami (the dark kitten with a creamy coloured chin and chest) and the lone boy is Buchi (white and tabby kitten). The names are mostly descriptive; Akashi is a shortened form of red stripe; Yami means darkness, and Buchi is the descriptive name for two coloured cats. As for Zara, well, I don’t know why I called her that (because she’s a bit of a Dame?). Even at athis young age they all have distinct personalities – Zara the keen explorer, Akashi the keen climber (yes, up the side of the kitten enclosure we bought for them, which is largely made of netting so you can see in), Buchi is a bit of a bully, at times, though they all like to wrestle, and Yami is the more gentle kitten, though she can run fast!

Zara (r) and Buchi

Yami (r) and Akashi in the background

Mum feeding while still in the box (which she didn’t want to move out of…)

Mum is now quite comfortable in the tent

Adjustments were made to the tent/cage connection after discovering that Akashi had managed to climb up the outside of the tent and get on the top edge. For a kitten, it is quite a drop from there…

At the moment I am trying to interest the kittens in solid food, but it is tricky because anything I put in the tent Tahlia wants to eat, and the kids don’t get much opportunity. So I have taken to putting Tahlia’s food in the tent along with a smaller bowl of food, but without sitting and watching them I am not sure exactly how much they are getting. Today is day four of my efforts to introduce food to them – perseverance is the key.

Despite the somewhat inclement weather, we have taken the opportunity to get out for a few excursions other than going shopping. We walked into town, partly for exercise and partly to buy a few things and we walked up to the Okazaki Park area to visit another of Kyoto’s famous gardens, Murin-an. For those of you who watched the Monty Don series about Japanese gardens, Murin-an was one of the featured smaller gardens which used the ‘borrowed landscape’ feature. Our final outing took us to Takaragaike (again) for a picnic with Lilia and Yuval.

For our walk into town we went via Kiyamachi road and returned home via Chishakuin to see the azaleas which were in bloom. Many streets in Kyoto are lined with azalea bushes and they feature in many other areas where there is room. Interestingly, though, most of the plantings are pink and white. I’m not sure why this is, but it is still a delight to see the bushes everywhere covered in flowers, some more colour after the blossom is finished.

For our walk up to Murin-an, we took the road along the side of the canal which we love to walk along. Murin-an was the garden villa of Yamagata Aritomo, one of Japan’s leading statesmen of the time, and was constructed between 1894-96. It is made up three buildings: a main house, a Western-style house and a tearoom. The garden is a modern Japanese garden design created by master gardener Ogawa Jihei VII based upon the owner’s instructions. Yamagata was, in fact, a landscape designer himself and he purposely designed the garden using the hills in the background and creating a more natural looking waterway within the grounds, which was irrigated from the recently constructed canal bringing water to Kyoto from Lake Biwa. He also made use of grass in the design, which was very unusual (still is, actually).

It is a lovely garden, very open and quite serene, despite its position on a busy street corner. There are very few floral elements, with most of the design using trees and quite open spaces, so that you can sit inside the house and see most of the garden area. The house is equally designed to take full advantage of this aspect and to blend in. Interestingly, the block is not overly large but the buildings have been placed on the edge of the land so as to maximise the garden area.

The tea house

A resident

During Golden Week we arranged to go an a picnic with Lilia and Yuval and since they had not been to Takaragaike, we thought it would be a nice place for them to visit. I also thought that it might be less crowded than many other places, given it was in the middle of Golden Week. There were more people there than we had seen before, but the park is large enough that you can still have plenty of space and it isn’t too noisy. Not as spectacular as our last picnic together, but definitely just as pleasant.

Looking up from our picnic spot

Before I sign off, I thought I’d mention how I was reminded the other day of the very uniqueness of Japan and its people. When we are out doing everyday things (such as shopping), or even just walking around in the suburbs, there are many things you see for which you think “only in Japan” (such as the very kawaii road barriers) or at times we see something and refer to it as “Japanese life”, such as seeing all the bedding hanging over balconies on warm, sunny days. More often than not, we have become used to seeing things like this and don’t really notice them. The other day we went to a hardware store and parked in the rooftop carpark. As we got back to the car I was vaguely looking around and noticed in amongst the very western style multi storey buildings one rooftop which had a small shrine on it…”Japanese life” 😊.

Cheers for now!

Also Japanese life:

Interesting names (a beauty parlour)

Dogs in prams

A proper translation unintentionally funny

People dressed up in fun costumes

Beautiful light fittings in a fence next to a gate

The last three are photos from our garden – the bottom one is our yuzu tree, with baby fruit!

It’s me!!!