Welcome to the Bumper Xmas Edition (aka I Haven’t Had Any Time Over The Last Three Months To Spend Producing A Post) Post.

The last three months have been crazy! We haven’t had one day without guests up until the 16^th of this month. In fact, for most of the time we had at least four rooms occupied and very few days where we didn’t have at least one checkin. After a while, every morning I felt like it was Groundhog Day, ie all days started to feel the same. It got to the point where we were calling any day where there were no checkins a ‘light’ day – and there were few of those.

We had some interesting times during this period, such as when we found a large hornet, known in the US as ‘murder hornets’, in our bedroom. After a slight panic, Craig managed to get it out with deft use of the shoji on the window.

Photos from the internet

We also had one incident where we weren’t home when two guests arrived for checkin. To start this tale, I need to mention that I managed to damage one of my large toes three days prior to their arrival…I was carrying a load of bedding and bathroom requirements for two people to a room in preparation for a checkin. Perhaps I was moving a little too rapidly up the stairs, especially since I couldn’t see past the pile of linen, etc and caught the edge of one of the stairs with my left foot. To prevent myself from falling, I slammed my right foot on the next step up, but did so a bit too vigorously and too far forward, connecting with the riser quite hard. I heard a cracking sound and my first thought was “oh no, I’ve damaged the stairs”. Actually, I had cracked the bone at the tip of my large toe – sigh.

Ouch!

Anyway, the guests were due to checkin around 5pm and we needed to go shopping both for ourselves and the business. We figured we had about three hours, with half an hour safety margin. Of course, it was the weekend and it was raining, which meant that the mall was likely to be busy, but we thought it would be fine. We got there and there was a shortish queue to get into the carpark, but we kept going. What we didn’t realise was that a new parking payment system had just been installed, which fundamentally changed the dynamics of the carpark…

We started to get concerned when we went a short way inside the building and we stopped moving – the carparking area consists of four floors of parks, starting on the 5th floor and we were still on the ground level. It took at least 20 minutes to get to the rooftop level (all the other floors were full) and there were only a few parks left. The supermarket wasn’t too busy as most of the people were there for the cinemas, games arcade and food hall. We moved as fast as we could, with me hobbling as quickly as I could and made it back to the rooftop at about 3:45pm – we should have been able to make it home easily.

After 45 minutes had passed and we had moved approximately 20 metres from our parking spot, still on the roof, I decided to try to get home by taxi. Craig suggested the train station taxi rank, as the mall is close to the station. I set off down the escalators and outside into the rain, trying to move reasonably quickly. As I approached the taxi rank I could see there was a huge queue waiting – I estimated at least 300 people – so, I turned around to head for the nearest main road in a homeward direction, and so started the inaugural 600m hobbling dash with an increased difficulty factor of rain. As I limped along, I wondered how ridiculous I must have looked, dripping wet and hobbling as fast as I could (and in pain). I finally reached the main road and after a while a vacant taxi came along. As usual, the taxi driver had difficulties trying to navigate to our place meaning I had to cover the last 30 metres on foot and arrived 20 minutes after our guests were due. Luckily one of our other guests was here and had already let them in, so they were happily ensconced in the dining room. Meanwhile, Craig was stuck on the rooftop for over two hours and arrived home well after 6pm.

Speaking of the weather, it has been unusually warm here over the last three months, with max temperatures staying above 20C until 9 November and in the teens until yesterday, with the first sub 10C max for the season. This has meant the Autumnal colour stayed with us until just recently, which was a bonus for all our guests who stayed here into December. Luckily we were able to get out twice to see some colour on the two ‘light’ days we had available.

In late November, we offered to take two of our guests to a temple they wanted to go to which was a long way to go via public transport. I had been interested in going to another temple which was nearby, so we took them there and then went to the other temple after. Takako had mentioned the first temple, Kosanji, and the other temple was named Otagi Nenbutsuji. Kosanji turned out to be largely destroyed, though the grounds were filled with huge cedar trees and there was some nice colour in amongst it. The real stand-out was the second temple – it was truly amazing, with over 1,200 small statues in the grounds. After visiting Kosanji we drove along a private road which is very scenic, so it was a lovely excursion all in all.

Otagi was built in the Higashiyama area in 770CE, but was washed away during a flooding of the Kamogawa river. Subsequently it was re-built in the Arashiyama area. Further misfortunes befell the temple and it was moved again, then in 1955 a new head monk was appointed, who also happened to be an accomplished sculptor of statues. After another rebuild, he decided to request visitors to the temple carve statues, under his guidance, of Buddha’s disciples. This occurred between 1981 and 1991, with the result that they are an amazing array of very different styles and shapes, including one standing on its head!

To top it off, there was a full rainbow on the way home – very unusual in Kyoto

Our other ‘colour seeking’ visit happened earlier this month when we went to Enkoji. I wanted to find somewhere we hadn’t been to see the momiji, and this one did not disappoint. Not as extensive as some other temples, such as my favourite, Eikando, but still a magical experience.

I haven’t mentioned the visit of Craig’s youngest sister, her husband and youngest son, who has just turned 11. It was very busy for the two weeks they were here, in October, so we couldn’t spend overly much time with them, but we did have dinners with them and got out twice. Craig was thrilled to have them here – it had been well over six years since he had seen any of his family in person.

We also caught up with a friend from Adelaide who I used to work in the same department with, and her mother. Unfortunately it had to be a fairly quick catch up due to time constraints, but it was really lovely to spend some time with them.

There have been two other ‘major’ events in the past three months – my birthday and our anniversary (34 years together, 32 years married). As I mentioned in my last post, I had made a reservation to go to an izakaya for my birthday, Saishuan Shiraki. We had a wonderful night with six other customers there, all foreign tourists, and one of them was celebrating her birthday on that night, too. Miho, the owner and cook, is a very friendly and funny host and somehow she found out it was my birthday (Craig), so I ended up with a birthday hat on my head, which I duly passed on when we found out there was another birthday person at the bar.

We tried…

A couple of the multitude dishes served for our set menu (oh. and me after being ‘hatted’)

For our anniversary we ended up going to a pizza bar in Osaka, which was great though it was a three hour round trip to get there. This actually came about because we didn’t get around to doing anything about organising a night out until all suitable options here in Kyoto had already been booked out. Truth is I was glad we went in the end, not just because we could eat pizza not made by us, but also because the main cook there makes all the vegan cheeses and faux meats, which we had discovered previously and were interested in buying but hadn’t been able to find a way to pay for. Seng has said she will try to find another way for us to pay, such as Paypal, which they don’t normally use. Fingers crossed.

On the good news front, apart from us being very busy and getting very good reviews from all but about three of our guests* (who were not vegan, and one was a cat hater as well!) two new cafes have recently opened very close to us which are vegan!!! Interestingly neither had any idea we were here and one of them had never heard of Happy Cow, the go to place for vegans and vegetarians to find restaurants. The first café, called Ku-kai, has a very small menu (but it does include carrot cake 😊) while the other, called Silver Back’s Café, has a fairly extensive menu, including nachos and pho, along with a number of desserts. We went there on Sunday, the food was good and the owner was a very jovial man. Fantastic, because there hasn’t been much for our vegan guests that is nearby. That is now remedied – hopefully they’ll prosper.

What an amazing year it has been, extraordinarily busy and very tiring at times. We learnt some things and have changed a few things to take some of the pressure off us and ensure potential guests are clear about our house rules (it’s interesting how many people book, receive our message containing said rules and then cancel). It looks like it may be another busy year in 2024, with the late March/early April blossom time already booked out, and we still keep getting messages asking about availability – “we tried to book but couldn’t…”

Well, I’ll leave it there for now. We both hope everyone has a wonderful year end and an even better new year!

Cheers

*           having said that, we are sitting on 9.6 out of 10 on Booking.com, 4.9 out of 5 on Google reviews and 5 out of 5 on Happy Cow, which we are happy about 😊

A selection of the individual statues, including the ‘Easter Island’ head, a vampire (?), Zaphod Beeblebrox, and what appears to be a statue “restored” by an elderly Spanish woman. It appears one of the disciples may have played tennis, while another was a boxer?! All of the statues had a name inscribed on the back, presumably the creator.

Pulling faces on my birthday – before we went to the bar…

Sunsets

We had never seen the doors open and the lights on revealing the Buddha at Chisakuin before

The Evans have an interesting coat of arms!

A skirt made of liquid metal!

At the station

At the mall

Poster at a department store

We bought the kids a toy to keep them occupied while we were busy

Tahlia strikes various poses

Testing our phone cameras – photos taken in the dark

My phone doing weird things to light sources – the eye in the sky?

For the enthusiasts/nerds

Our little tree turns red

Pink flowers

Halloween out and at home

Free ride station

Where’s Craig gone?

Me striking various poses