…and in breaking news, Vegan Minshuku Sanbiki Neko is now a fully licenced accommodation facility. Yes, in a record breaking 40 days, approval has been granted to the extremely grateful Addams Family to now run their minshuku as a fully fledged operation.

An email was received just before midnight on Friday night from the scrivener informing them of this momentous outcome – it was in Japanese, but they were able to ascertain the general gist. At around 5am on Saturday morning, a full English translation of the email was received, confirming this result.

Hello and welcome dear readers to possibly the shortest post yet! We have been doing even less than before, due to a certain phalanx injury, so I am mainly reporting on the above headline news.

It’s funny, though, as much as I want to be really excited about this news (just as I wanted to be really excited about finally selling our house in Adelaide) because it has taken so long and been quite fraught, what I am really feeling is relief. So, now there is one final hurdle to completing our plans and fully settling into our new lifestyle and that is the sale of our flat (so we can buy all the things we need to finish the fitout of the minshuku, and buy ourselves a full sized fridge 😊). We also now have to start really pushing ourselves out into the market. We already have three reviews on Google, which is a good start.

One question that springs to mind – why did the scrivener send us an email so late at night? Was he still working? I can’t imagine that he received the news himself just before he sent the email, but then maybe the public servants having been doing a lot of overtime to get through the work…hhhmmmm, hard to imagine them working that late, though. Funny we should receive approval on the day our newest friends left to go to Tokyo. Also, Saturday was the anniversary of Craig arriving here permanently.

Our last two groups of guests truly were lovely people and we are staying in touch with both of them. In fact, the family of four have invited us to stay with them in London if we ever go back to the UK. We are also now friends on FB with the couple (well, Craig is, as I have no presence there).

On the weather front (!), another typhoon passed through the other day and this time it turned north east, so we did not get any of the stormy weather here. It did, however, finally give us a little relief from the heatwave, and we are now experiencing some cooler days below 35C (although still above 32 so far). What has also changed is the humidity, ie it is now becoming more humid. In essence it is now becoming more like the summer of last year. Ironically, we are now hoping for some rain!!!

This week is O-Bon week, during which Japanese people honour the spirits of their ancestors. It is a Buddhist-Confucian custom which has evolved in Japan into a family reunion holiday, during which people return to ancestral family places and visit and clean their ancestors’ graves. It is also believed the spirits of ancestors revisit household altars. It has been celebrated in Japan for more than 500 years and traditionally includes a dance, known as Bon-Odori.

(2 photos from the internet)

The culmination of the O-Bon festival, which is on 16 August, involves five giant bonfires being lit on the mountains surrounding Kyoto city, known as Diamonji. This signifies the moment when the visiting spirits, who are said to visit this world during O-Bon, are believed to be returning to the spirit world and the fires are lit to help guide them back. We will be going out to watch Diamonji on Thursday night – a local school allows locals in to sit on the rooftop to watch the fires, so it’s not too far for me to walk.

I leave you now with a photo of a mascot we ran across the other day, outside the supermarket.

 A duck-like ice cream??

Cheers!