Well hello there! I am coming to you from a somewhat changed Kyoto, indeed Japan, a place where tourists can come and go as they please. Yes, certain areas are becoming more crowded, but it is for the best. We currently have one guest for two nights, and we have a couple staying here next weekend for three nights. So it is already bringing us some business, which makes us happy.

Weather-wise, there has also been a sudden change, with the temperatures dropping from the low 30s into the mid to low 20s, with a few days peaking in the sub-20s. This means the colouring is beginning, starting with the Dogwood trees, and there is even a little colour starting on our Japanese maple. Hopefully it will happen fairly slowly, to give us time to enjoy it more. Anyway, it is nice not to have to use the air-cons for a while and to have the windows open.

Also, when the weather is pleasant, it just makes me feel like going for long walks and so we have taken two long walks. One of these was to go and lodge our room tax paperwork (yes, there is no on-line system, you literally have to fill out a piece of paper and either post it or deliver it personally to the office in town), and the other took us to a vegan festival at Okazaki park.

From our home to the room tax office it is about 4.3km, which takes around 50 minutes, and it was a lovely day. We zig zagged through shrines and along the famous Hanamikoji road, which we discovered, to our horror, has had asphalt laid on it. It used to be paved along its entirety, but not any more. Why? Who knows, but it has lost quite a lot of its charm in the process. After we had delivered our piece of paper, we went to Mumokuteki for lunch (a huge lunch at that), and then walked home (which helped me digest all that food 😊).

Yes it was red spider lily time…

Mine

Craig’s

Our other walk was a little shorter, given that Okazaki park is around 3.3km from home, although we did take a slight detour getting there to drop off some rice to a homeless man that Lilia (our Israeli friend who recently left Japan) used to give rice to fairly regularly. His name is Kasagawa-san, and he lives next to one of the canals near Okazaki park. Of course having given him one lot of rice, and knowing he has no income, I sort of feel like I have to continue to help him, especially with winter looming…

So, on to Okazaki park for the festival, though it was more a lunch fair with not overly many stalls and most of them just selling food for immediate consumption. Prior to The Virus, the festivals used to be quite large and there were a variety of stalls, still it was interesting to see what was available. We tried some Sudanese eggplant salad, which we had never had before (never even heard of before, really) and it was was very nice. Once we had finished trying various foods, we walked home along one of my favourite streets, the one that meanders along the side of a canal and is lined by willow trees, which I love.

Kakigori machine and the resultant matcha kakigori

Random shots…

I noticed the geiko, but I didn’t want to be too obvious, so a photo of Craig and others…

We did take one other walk into town, which is a shorter distance, but returned home by bus as I have recently hurt my foot and it had started to hurt a bit (ok, I was noticeably limping). While we were in town, we found a new sign which had been highlighted in a recent news story, which is aimed directly at taxi drivers who stop illegally to pick up and drop off fares at a particularly busy intersection. Basically, the sign is a double sided board with a window in it through which you can see the corner in question.

On one side it essentially says that the taxi you can see through the window is stopped illegally and that there is a taxi stand just one minute’s walk away. On the other side it has a pair of eyes and says “Driver-san, you are stopped illegally and everyone can see you”. The aim, of course is to shame the driver into not stopping there and to remind people to go to the taxi stand to hail taxis. Only in Kyoto 😊.

Speaking of only in Kyoto, there was another story in the same paper about a large bamboo shoot which had been placed on the footpath in the Gion area in substitution for a witches hat cone. The story goes that the owner restaurant where the bamboo shoot was placed had been given the shoot and decided to put it out front of the restaurant while the restaurant was being renovated. He even named the shoot – Takenokone – a mashup of the Japanese word for bamboo shoot (takeno) and the word cone, but using a k since there is no c in the Japanese language.

It stood there until it naturally shrivelled and died, at which point the owner put back the witches hat, placed the outer skin of the bamboo shoot on top of it and added a funerary style note which said “Takenokone-sama achieved great things while working admirably as the Takenokone, and was loved by many in its life,” as well as including a death poem. It also noted a posthumous name, which had been conveyed upon it, Mosoin Suzume Homare Asa Hori Takebayashi Koji, with the Takebayashi portion meaning ‘bamboo forest’. There was also a photo of Takenokone, which is traditional for death notices. The owner said he initially put the shoot on the footpath just to brighten up people’s days 😊.

During this last month, apart from taking some long walks, we have spent an unusual amount of time at two different Vet surgeries. The first visit was for the two female kittens to have their ‘special’ operation, which they were definitely not happy about. While the surgeries went well, the next day one of the girls, Akashi – the smallest of the kittens, was not well. She was sweating and shaking, so we packed her up and took her fairly hurriedly to our usual Vet surgery (we had been using a different Vet for all the visits for the mum and kids because he is used to dealing with street cats and is a lot cheaper than most other Vets (he kindly discounts the costs for people helping street cats).

The Vet we saw at our usual surgery said her symptoms were due to her being in pain and prescribed some painkillers, as well as some antibiotics, just in case. None of the other kittens, nor mum had experienced pain like this, and the streetcat Vet never offered painkillers, although the Vet we saw for Akashi said they always send cats home with enough painkillers for three days. I was definitely relieved by her diagnosis, because I was worried Akashi may be bleeding.

Ziggy also visited the Vet, twice. The first visit was his regular three monthly check for his urinary condition. In a turn of events this time the Vet discovered that Ziggy has become diabetic. So we are now injecting him with insulin twice daily. The other visit was another emergency visit, after I discovered him straining to urinate and the urine was bloody. Luckily the Vet who runs the surgery happened to be there, because he can speak some English, and he was able to let us know it was an infection which is fairly common in cats, especially during seasonal change.

He was shocked, though, to find out Ziggy was also now a diabetic and he asked us to return when both he and the usual Vet we see for Ziggy are there, to discuss Ziggy’s issues. Again, a relief in knowing it was not too bad, but it means we are giving him four tablets every night for ten days to deal with this.

In other cat news, Buchi has found a new home in Yokohama, which was quite bittersweet as we have become quite attached to all of them. It was also quite stressful as Buchi did not cope well with this move for the first few days, with him refusing to eat and drink for two days, and then mewling and eating only a little after that. We spent quite a bit of time messaging with the woman who took him…

We miss him

On a final, purely for interest, note the number of centenarians in Japan has now risen to over 90,000! When I first moved here, nearly six years ago, there were around 63,000. I wonder how much higher this will get?

That’s all for now

Cheers

Ah, the month (+) of Halloween

Also, it is my birthday month

A fabulous fresh fig feast and pumpkin spice cupcake

Help me!!!!

Please?

This is what happens when two guys try to create their own marketing…and their product? Vegetable pickles

This year’s big mama winner

Bikes, trucks, dinosaurs…

The sky’s on fire!

More cloud photos

There has to be some flower photos

One thing I forgot to mention, we have discovered a tempura and udon restaurant (Menkui Kinya) which has a vegan section of the menu. Vegan tempura – yum! Our second visit, and we will return.