What? It’s January? What happened to December?

Hello everyone and Happy New Year! Yes, I did miss the December episode and, to be honest, while we did go out and do things, there were virtually no photographs to put in the blog because either we did not do anything photo-worthy, or we couldn’t take photos, such as when we went to see Kodo (the Japanese taiko group). This concert, by the way, was fantastic – both visually and musically – but the only photo I have is of the concert hall pre performance.

A quick note on the weather; winter started very cold with many days of sub-10C maxima, including one of 4C – no real snow, though. Since the second half of December we have had mostly double digit maxima, including a couple of days in the mid-teens recently. So, since we are now halfway through January, it doesn’t look very likely we are going to get any snow this year, and certainly not any significant falls like we had on the 21^st of January last year.

Other happenings during December included our 33^rd anniversary (31 years married), a walk with our friend Nacho and his partner into town and then dinner at Engine Ramen to celebrate Winter Solstice (although the walk was meant to be along the Kyoto trail, but inclement weather prevented that), and we had a last minute xmas lunch with Rachel and Dave, which only happened because I was talking to Dave via electronic means and he didn’t have anything planned, so I thought it would be nice to invite him here. Then Craig suggested we should also invite Rachel since she was also alone. All of this organising happened the day before xmas day…

We had two bookings late in December, including a couple who were here for new year’s eve, which meant we didn’t do much in the way of celebrating new year on the night. We did, however, undertake the ritual visit to a shrine in the first week of January (hatsumode – although we didn’t go on one of the first three days of the year, but made it there on the fourth). At the shrine you pay your respects to the kami (deities) and ask for what you would like for the new year. We went to the Ebisu shrine (the business deity) and I asked for a good year for our business (unsurprisingly). After this, we went to Engine Ramen.

On our way to the shrine we also stopped by the Kyoto Ceramic Centre to get our new ceramic animal figurine for the year, this year’s being a rabbit. The animals are known as eto here, and ceramic figurines of the year’s eto are generally displayed in businesses as well as some homes. Most of the generally available figurines are white ceramic, often painted with red and other colour highlights. Last year we discovered a range of cubist-like figurines in the ceramic centre and are now collecting them each year.

On the 7^th of January, we went to see an exhibition at the MOMAK (modern art) gallery featuring works from the Museum Ludwig Cologne. Amazing exhibition with a huge range of 20^th century art, mostly collected by Peter and Irene Ludwig. Artists included Picasso, Kandinsky, Ernst, Malevich and Lichtenstein. Loved it. After this tour de force, we went to try a new restaurant (new to us, that is), Bali-Bali Indonesia. Good selection of food, some of which is vegan. Yum – and we have already been back there again 😊.

All of these copies came from the internet

Last week, the annual Ebisu festival was held and we have also made it a ritual to go to this every year, since it helps liven up January (which is normally cold and fairly uneventful) and we also have taken to buying a new shikishi from the lovely lady who runs a shop selling mainly shikishi and paraphernalia on the street where the festival is held. I was looking for one that was wintry, perhaps with pines and snow, but there wasn’t a suitable picture, so I ended up buying one with lovely purple iris. Not at all wintry, really. We also had our usual samosas at a stall which has been there every year, run by Indian people who live in Kobe now.

Prior to going to the festival, we went to an Andy Warhol exhibition at the Kyoto City Kyocera Museum of Art (long name…). A second exhibition visit with a week?! Well, during the recent Difficulties period, all galleries and museums were closed for quite a while, so with them open again and some exhibitions which we are interested in seeing, it’s a matter of carpe diem. I wasn’t exactly sure what was going to be there, I assumed there would be soup cans and boxes, but it was so much more than that. In fact, I think I enjoyed it even more than the Ludwig exhibition!

Last year we watched a documentary series about Andy, so we had learnt quite a bit about his life, but I wanted to see more of his art, and it also happened that he had come to Japan, twice (in 1956 and in 1974), which we didn’t know. So the exhibition gave us a chance to look at a chronology of his works and the Japanese curation also added a focus on his visits here. Amazingly, we were able to take photos of anything we wanted to, the only restriction was in relation to videos. So, we took quite a few photos.

One of the best parts of the exhibit was a room installation which had some of his silver cloud pillows floating around (there were fans) and the walls were used to project both photos and shapes and colours on them. This was fantastic fun and gave us an opportunity to interact with the works, making our own ‘art’ to photograph. Others were doing likewise. I enjoyed this as much as I have any Yayoi Kusama installations.

On the more business side of our lives, we are getting a lot (quite a lot) of bookings at the moment, mostly for late March and April. As of today, the first two weeks of April are pretty much a full house!!! One change we have made this year is to list ourselves on Booking.com, which I said we never would but we found that most of my main concerns we could work around. So, while most of our bookings are coming via our website, we are getting some from Booking.com. In fact, the longest booking now sitting on our books came via them – a 12 night stay starting late March!

Hopefully, all of this will help Immigration see us in a more positive light and they will renew our visas for three years when they come due this year.

That’s all for now. Burns night is coming up on the 25^th, so get out your clan colours!

Cheers!!!

Also traditional new year here – the Kabuki special January performances (and I still haven’t made it to one yet)

Inside the renovated art gallery

These two factories have always reminded me of a Jeffrey Smart painting, so just had to take it eventually…

…but then that set me on a sort of  industrial bent.

Still not sure what this means…

Things you see while walking

My latest effort (with acknowledgment to Craig for perspective)

Blossom!!!

Mum and the kids (who are now bigger than her). Zara is always on the move, so hard to get unblurred photos of her.

Recently we ‘inherited’ a cat tower (long story). The first shot is about one minute after Craig brought it in.

Interesting sake label at Engine Ramen

Well, better late than never?