…and as I was saying, hasn’t this been a crazy year so far?

Hello! Tis me returning with another month’s worth of “what have we been doing recently?” I hope you are all well and weathering the weirdness of this time as best you can. We are still not doing much, although we have had one guest stay here! She only stayed for one night, but even that was a nice change. She was a Japanese person, from Osaka, and she was here to get away from everything prior to getting down to some serious study for an English exam, which she needs to pass to enable her to migrate to Canada. A lovely person and she said she might bring her family here to stay after her exam…fingers crossed.

The last month here has been hot, hot, hot. I think we have had only one day below 35 (and even then it was around 34), but still we are not getting the super humidity that we have experienced in the previous few years. We have had a few fabulous thunderstorms and now we are getting some typhoon action – number 10 is just passing west of us at the moment, which may bring us some heavy rain.

Typhoon 10 – as big as Honshu

Another thing I have noticed since the end of the rain is the summer clouds. It just wouldn’t be summer here without the giant meringue clouds. Those great towering white behemoths are quite awe inspiring and beautiful. They are also harbingers of thunderstorms, though not always. None-the-less the sight of them always makes me feel happy.

Last month I introduced a new segment ‘Close Encounters of the Animal Kind’, which came about because we kept having interesting animals visiting our yard, as well as seeing some while we were out and about. I didn’t expect it could keep going monthly, though I was hoping to see a Tanuki up close. Unfortunately that has yet to happen, though I am not giving up. I have to report, though, that we have indeed had more up close encounters!

Firstly, I have to report that the Red Helens keep coming to our yard, to visit the Geisha and Lantana flowers, which makes me smile every time 😊. There has also been many visits from a different swallowtail butterfly, which is yellow and black, but not as big as the Helen. In fact, I saw two of them flying around together yesterday, so I’m hoping we may have some more next year.

There have been other members of the insect family visiting – the first being a Japanese Giant Mantis (called ookamakiri here). The one in our garden, who was enjoying our vegetables for some time, was around 11cms in length, with very large green eyes. The other frequent (almost daily) visitor is a Carpenter Bee, which loves the Geisha flowers. This one appears to be all black and about 2cms in length. It’s abdomen is shiny, unlike the bumblebee. These are solitary bees, which usually build their nests in wood, mainly dead wood, hence the name.

Notice the partially eaten leaves…

We have also had a couple of four-legged visitors. One of these is another Japanese Weasel (itachi), which we only knew was there because Ziggy went after it. He was on a lead attached to a heavy chair outside, and in his attempt to get the weasel he nearly pulled over the chair. The weasel, however, was incredibly fast and I suspect would be a rather fearsome fighter, so lucky Ziggy couldn’t get to it. This is about the third or fourth time we have seen one in our backyard recently, so I am beginning to think that it may live nearby, or even in our backyard. There is a hole at the base of the stone wall, which has been partially blocked up, but more than big enough to accommodate a weasel, and now the entrance is hidden behind some plants…

The last visitor was rather less expected – a Japanese Badger – well, actually two of them initially. It was late at night and very quiet outside, when all of a sudden we heard…noises which sounded like two squeaky toys fighting! We rushed to the back deck door, turning on the light in time to see the two fighting, with the loser then running away down the side of our house. The spoils??? Our fig tree, yet again. I watched it, as best I could see with the badger being dark in colour, climbing around in the fig tree. Unfortunately as it was night there are no photos, but I have included a couple of photos from the internet, for visual reference.

Yet again, this month, we haven’t done overly much, this time because of the heat rather than it being wet. We undertook two recreational outings, one at night and the other involving a visit to the mountains (both being cooler options 😊). Prior to these, we went to a birthday celebration for a woman we have met here. She and her husband are here on a scholarship and are from Israel. She is researching and writing an anthropology thesis.

About ten of us had a picnic dinner and drinks on the banks of the Kamo river to celebrate her 31^st birthday, which was very pleasant. It was definitely a mixed crowd of mostly women from many different countries; Israel, Mongolia, Nepal, Iran, Malaysia, Japan and, of course, Australia. It was nice to meet such a diverse range of women, most of them studying. We had an interesting discussion about Zoroastrians, amongst other topics!

The birthday girl learning a dance

Our night-time visit was to Nijo-jo, which was being lit up during the month of August. We started the evening by going to a restaurant we hadn’t been to for quite a while, which serves Taiwanese style veg food. The food was, as always, fabulous and this time there was a really nice young man serving who was from England but had a Japanese mother, so spoke both English and Japanese very well. Interestingly, he a very ‘posh’ English accent having grown up in Oxford. Following that pleasantness, we walked to Nijo-jo to stand in a queue for what ended up being around an hour, but then we are in Japan and they are the world champions at queuing.

We got there around half an hour before opening to make sure we got in, because they were limiting the number who could enter to ensure social distancing (which has become a term here – ソーシャル・ディスタンシング). Once we got our tickets we had to change lines to go in the gate, before which we had to load some tracking software (in case of the need to track everyone for a positive test in someone) and have our temperature taken.

Inside we received a lantern to carry with us and walked through areas which were lit to highlight certain parts of the grounds, along with a video of fireworks being displayed on one of the giant stone keep walls and some stations which produced bubbles filled with incense smoke (so that when they popped it smelled beautiful). The bubbles were underlit with coloured light, so looked quite spectacular as they poured out of the machines. All quite ethereal.

Our visit to the mountains took us to the villages of Kibune and then Kurama. We decided to again attempt the climb from Kibune village across the mountain to Kurama-dera and then have lunch at the veg restaurant in Kurama, at the base of the temple grounds. There was a slight hitch to our plans, though, because we didn’t know repairs were being undertaken on the Kurama train line. This meant we could only get to Ichihara station, which is three stops before Kibune. At the station we were directed to a bus station about 300m away, for a bus which took us to near the Kibune train station, at which point we had to change buses to get to Kibune, around 2kms away.

At Kibune we decided to visit Kifune Shrine which we had never been to before, than head up and over the mountain to Kuruma-dera – over 2kms, mostly up. It is somewhat strenuous doing the climb in this direction – much easier from the other direction, and as we climbed quite a few people passed us going in the other direction. When we reached the main temple hall of Kurama-dera, there was no-one else there. It was a very strange sight because it is a very popular temple with the Japanese. Anyway, it gave me plenty of time on the point of power in front of the hall, after which we descended to Kurama village and the restaurant. I always love having lunch there, and especially so after that exertion! We also got to see the new Tengu installation, which replaced the previous one damaged in the typhoon two years ago (hard to believe it was that long ago…).

Summer seating over the river

I was so hungry…

On a more mundane note, one of the interesting things about our life here is the fact we live on a short, dead-end road (a roji), which actually has no name. This sometimes causes issues when trying to give directions to get to our B&B, especially as the road our road runs off of also has no name…Anyway, our no name road is having some work done on it this week, to replace the storm water drains (we think). This is going to require the entire road be dug up, creating a problem re access to our home. There are no footpaths and the road is very narrow, one car wide, so for the duration we have had to move our car to a nearby temple carpark, which they have organised. Complications of life living in one of the old areas.

Just before I sign off, I should mention that Halloween has entered the shops already, which, as you should all know, I love!!! (and Craig fears as I see so many things I would love to buy 😊) Yet again Costco has some amazing Halloween items, including a 2m tall werewolf (WOW!). Scarily, there are hints of xmas also appearing, and so I leave you with some photos of the Petemo xmas catalogue for your pets, highlighting the xmas cake ranges for cats and dogs, and a range of pet hors d’oeuvres……………….

Cheers!

I’ve recently taken to taking photos of us in trains, because there’s so few people in them it’s weird. Anyway, didn’t notice the two in the background had photo bombed until I checked the photos before writing the post!!!! Hilarious. Not normally something that happens here.

Interesting names for wine – huggy, or crass?

No words…

Love an apricot sky

Two years on, and they’re still dealing with the aftermath. Firewood anyone?

Dry arrangements

From the upstairs window

Looks like a brain, or maybe coral?

The long hot summer