Part deux begins now:-

I’m back again, and with more trees. Last time I showed you quite a few tree photos, and the places we went and trees we saw were wonderful, but I have to say that the next destination turned out to be one of the best displays yet. We had tried to find this place once before, but didn’t manage to find it. We caught a train out to a town called Kameoka, and then we were supposed to catch a bus out to the spot where the trees were, but there was no bus for a very long time, and when we tried to walk out there, well, we couldn’t find it. In fact, this whole shemozzle led us to finding the Hozugawa boat ride, so, in fact, it turned out to be quite fortuitous. We have since had two rides down the Hozugawa and enjoyed every minute.

BCV, obviously

Now, back to the current story, our visit to the Yawaragi no michi area (finally). This time we went via car, and we took our friends Lilia and Yuval with us. Lilia had suggested we take a hanami journey somewhere together, but everywhere I suggested she had been to in the recent past (Lilia writes a public blog and so is always looking for something new to write about). Finally I remembered our not so successful search for this blossom walk, and luckily she hadn’t been there before.

It was about an hours drive there, and I discovered that the distance between the train station and the walk was a long way – a very long way – so not surprising we didn’t find it. Unsurprisingly, there were a lot of people there, but the area was large enough that it didn’t seem too crowded. The local council has obviously gradually expanded the tree plantings, and we could see that there were some fairly recent plantings along the river. Apparently there are about 1,500 trees and the walk along the riverside extends for about 1km.

We took some picnic provisions with us and enjoyed sitting under a very large tree while partaking our repast. There were, in fact, many spots to sit and enjoy this amazing place, and many families, couples and friends were doing just that. It was a glorious, sunny day, not overly warm, but pleasant for walking. While we were there we saw some interesting sights, including a paraglider over the hills, a woman who had brought her dog and a chair on which she had placed the dog for photographs under the sakura (!), and a man who had brought a little person made from cardboard, who he was also photographing under the sakura…

Where we ate our lunch

The cardboard person strolling

All in all a wonderful journey, in beautiful surroundings, with good friends and food and some rather interesting people. On top of all this, there was no entry fee only a parking fee of ¥500 (although I think they could ask for donations towards upkeep and improvement of facilities – there was only one western style toilet) and the cost of petrol to get there.

Talking about interesting sights, during the hanami time we had a dirigible flying over our house for a few days. We first noticed the sound of a flying vehicle, but not the usual helicopter sound (we have many, many helicopters flying around our area, which we assume are mostly for tourists). It also didn’t sound like a light plane, so we just had to check what it was, and there above our house was an Asahi advertising blimp. With so many tourists in Kyoto for hanami, it is obviously worth the cost. Funnily enough, on the bottom of the blimp it said, in English, “Look Up Japan”, which you can only see if you are already looking up…

The last place we visited during this period was at the suggestion of Lilia, to a shrine that is very near Kyoto University, where she recently completed her doctorate. It is called Yoshida Jinja and was founded in 859CE by the Fujiwara clan, which the Encyclopaedia Britannica describes as a “dynastic family that, by shrewd intermarriage and diplomacy, dominated the Japanese imperial government from the 9th to the 12th century”. Further, it states that “The power and authority of the Fujiwara family rested not on military prowess but on political strategy and on the family’s special relationship to the imperial family, which it carefully cultivated and exploited. This relationship stemmed from the Fujiwara policy of maintaining attachment to the imperial family through the marriage of Fujiwara daughters to emperors. It meant that the Fujiwara daughters were empresses, that their grandsons and nephews were emperors, and that members of their family, including its lesser branches, received all the patronage. Thus, the Fujiwara clan chieftain, whether he held office or not, could manipulate the reins of government.” Interesting.

Anyway, this shrine was very important to the emperors – essentially it was the guardian shrine for the Heian-kyo (present day Kyoto) Palace. It came to be called Yoshida Jinja in reference to a new denomination of Shinto created by the Head Priest of the shrine, Yoshida Kanetomo, some time during the late 1400s. Yoshida Shinto no longer exists as a separate denomination, mainly because it essentially took over as the Shinto religion. Basically, by the time he became head priest Buddhism and Shintoism had become effectively intermingled and he was concerned that Shinto was the original Japanese religion, with Buddhism having been imported from China. So he set about re-establishing Shinto as a separate religion from Buddhism, obviously quite successfully.

The shrine is located on one of the hills to the east of Kyoto (where we are also located, just a little further south from there), and within the grounds there are many smaller sub-shrines. The majority of the land, however, is wooded with paths winding through the trees, which makes it a nice place to walk. The reason Lilia mentioned it is because at the back of the shrine land there is a sub-shrine with a number of torii gates lining the walk to the shrine. In the gaps between these gates there are blossom trees, which makes for a very pretty walk and nice photos, when they are in bloom. Unfortunately, by the time we got there, most of the blossom had gone. Still, like I said a nice walk, with good views of Kyoto and the blimp, which had clearly followed us!

One thing I should mention from our visit to the shrine is the sighting of a bride and groom prior to their wedding ceremony. I think I have mentioned before that Shinto takes care of the ‘life’ things, such as marriage and children blessings, house blessings etc, while Buddhism takes care of the afterlife things, ie funerals and cemeteries, etc. For the traditional parts of the marriage ceremonies, the brides and grooms wear traditional clothing, with most brides choosing to wear a white kimono and interesting white headwear, which I thought you might like to see. I have used a photo from the electronic oracle, as the bride we saw had yet to put it on, though I saw it on a bench ready for the bride to don.

Waiting around

The bottom two photos show a bride and groom during the proceedings and a bride in close up.

Before I sign off, I should mention that our furry grandchildren are two weeks old today 😊. Their ears have all unfurled and their eyes are fully open, so we are making sure to let them see us, as much as is possible since they are spending most of their time drinking and sleeping. Tahlia is back to her supermodel shape (slim with very long legs), and she is doing a great job of looking after them. Unfortunately all of this means it is very hard to get any photos of them.

That’s all for now

Cheers!

Some strange people, or is it blossom sickness?

A couple of cosplay girls being photographed

Even the pavers have blossom on them

Not sure if these are two separate birds, or just the one moving around so that it is photographed a lot

This cafe was up near the summit of the Yoshida shrine. Obviously popular, because there was a queue to get in. The bottom photo shows an old concrete table and bench there.

Lichen on  a cherry tree.

Ending on a non-blossom note, to prepare you for next time…

Guess what? It’s tree time again!

Hello and welcome to part one of a two part posting in which you will see more voluptuously voyeuristic tree photos than you thought possible in two sittings. Theoretically, all of this should be in only one post but there are so many fabulous photos, that I can’t bring myself to reduce them down that much. Sitting in the folder for this post are around 300 photos of trees! Now, don’t panic, I am not going to put in anywhere near that many, and the difficult task of culling is yet to come for me, but at least it is a rather pleasurable difficulty…

The truth about hanami…

Spring has well and truly sprung here and the weather is gradually improving, with days in the 20s now dominating the weather. The warmest day we have had this year, so far, was 27C – glorious. I wore a t-shirt and sandals! It felt like real freedom; lighter clothing, my feet un-socked (can I use that as a term?) and no cold wind. The puffs are all put away. I have heard some people call this time ‘the greening’, and it does seem an apt term to me. Our garden is turning green again, with all our plants now sprouting. We have even had the first flowers from one of our irises, a gorgeous yellow bearded iris.

Speaking of our garden, we have had to do a little re-arranging, as we found some plants just didn’t like where we initially put them. We have also had to replace some plants which just haven’t coped with the last two winters – too cold then too much snow. Unfortunately one of these was the purple princess flower bush, which I loved. I couldn’t find a suitable endemic plant that was purple to replace it, so we decided to replace it with a camellia which we know can survive the winters here.

We found the geisha plants weren’t overly happy during winter too and tended to die back completely, so we have put two of the three into pots and replaced them with a couple of wisteria plants. We also had to move the dogwood tree and have replaced it with a white magnolia. Hopefully these changes will mean a more settled garden which can grow happily. Fingers crossed.

In terms of natural phenomena, we have also had at least four earthquakes near us in the last two weeks, which is a little unusual. While there are earthquakes in Japan basically every day, we don’t get too many around us. They haven’t been very strong, more in the medium magnitude 3 – 5 range at the epicentre, which translated to about magnitude 1 – 3 for us. Interestingly, I have had to add a new descriptor to my earthquake scale – the Double Hit. Two of the four recent earthquakes fall into this category. We have never experienced this type of quake before. The first time we felt this we were watching tv; we felt the slight movement and heard the house creak, and thought ‘good, that was not so bad’, then a couple of seconds later it happened again. Somewhat unnerving.

The second time this type of quake happened, Craig was at gym and I was at home doing my stretching and ballet routine. The first hit was very similar to the previous one – slight movement, house creaked – I thought, ok, good, not too bad. Then about four seconds later I heard the second one coming. This time it was stronger than the first hit – a rattler – enough to get me off the floor and the kids to look concerned. Craig said he felt it at the gym, too. Of the other two, the first was the strongest of them all and woke me up, at around 11:30 pm. It was a swayer, and lasted for a while. Yes, I was rocked awake. Strangely, even though it only felt like it was swaying, the shoji were rattling.

In terms of much more pleasant natural phenomena, we had a few outings specifically to view the blossom (hanami, as it is known here) during this period. We made a return visit to Daigoji, as planned, and we walked into town, which takes us along many blossom tree lined roads, and we returned via the Chishakuin cemetery, where there are some lovely trees. The other outings will be covered in the next post.

Near our home

As expected, there were many more people visiting Daigoji, but it was worth going there. The temple grounds are so vast that even though there were hundreds of people, we could still get some photos without people in them, although most of those were taken over their heads (luckily we are relatively tall here, yes, even me). It wasn’t quite peak time, with some trees still to open, but there were plenty that were and it was a beautiful sunny day. Not much more to say really, so here is a selection of the photos:

On the day we walked into town, it was very grey on the way in and it was a little cooler, but it was still a very pleasant walk. There are so many cherry trees planted in and around Kyoto, that you can pretty much walk in any direction and you will find blossom at this time of year. It really is a wonderful thing, which makes any walk into a lovely hanami experience.

To finish this post off, I have an update on our newest family member, Tahlia. After bringing her inside and ensuring she was disease free, we started letting her integrate into the family a bit more, which she was very keen to do (even if the other kids were not quite so keen). At first we let the others go out into the dining room, and Tahlia was a little aloof at first. I would feed her out there, to ensure Ziggy couldn’t steal any of her food (he likes to do that…). As she was pregnant, I changed her diet to a kitten food based diet, as recommended on the internet because kitten food is higher in calories, which a pregnant cat needs.

After about a week, she decided that she should come out into our area – so I would give her breakfast in the dining room, then she would join us after. At night, I would take her food out to the dining room, and she would follow me out there. We didn’t want her to sleep in our area, because even though she was there all day, the other kids were still adjusting to her presence (if you know what I mean).

During this time, Tahlia became increasingly affectionate with us, and she just loved lying on the heated floor at night. Sometimes she would lie right in front of me, so I could rub her belly. Gradually her belly grew, until she looked like a furry football with four legs.

We made a ‘birthing box’ for her, out of a cardboard box. I followed directions from the internet, lining it with plastic, and using cat toilet pads for padding and to capture fluids from birthing and the kittens’ toilet needs. These pads are made to be used either inside litter trays or there are trays especially made where you put the pads on drawers which are under a perforated tray. Tahlia basically ignored the box up until she was nearly two months pregnant. We were worried she would find somewhere else rather less suitable.

One morning I discovered that she had been in the box and had mostly pulled all the linings apart. So, I decided to remove the plastic lining, as it was this that she had really shredded. I kept the padding at the bottom and rearranged the toilet pads, to make them neater. The, on the morning of the 12^th of April, day 64 of her pregnancy, I went out to the dining room to find her in the box, all the layers rearranged by her to form a sort of nest in the corner, and she was panting. I got down to see how she was and at that moment she gave birth to her first kitten! She started cleaning it, and it started squeaking (relief).

After this, over the next few hours, she gave birth to three more bundles of fur. Mother and babies were fine, and the anxious grandmamar (me) was able to relax a little. Having had her babies, she has become much less affectionate, and is now in aggressively protective mummy mode, so we are hassling her as little as possible, and our plans to try to remove the top layer of the toilet pads has completely gone out the window. Our friend who feeds some of the cat colonies, who we helped to move cats and paraphernalia to the house she bought for the cats, has suggested we wait and let Tahlia make the first move in terms of cleaning out the box. This has also taken a weight off our minds. The thing is, all the information on the internet is really aimed at people whose pet cat is having kittens, not one you have recently trapped and brought inside from the streets.

So, we are grandparents 😊, and we are learning. The photos I have of her and the kittens were taken from a distance, and then edited so that more can be seen. I’m not even sure if they all have tails, yet. One thing, none of them look like their mum, that I can see. The father is a ginger and white, fully tailed cat.

That’s all for now. The next post will be “The trees, part deux”.

Cheers!

Hurrah!

Queuing for a restaurant

I wonder if Kitchen Aid was paid for this image…?

Normal Pocky on the left and the new tasty ones on the right… 

for Steven

Um, what is Tonteki?

These ducks may look like normal ducks, but they are the ones that walk instead of swimming!!! (they are walking on the bottom…)

There are some amazing street and mall decorations

Yes, I do like Tanuki

Also, turtles

Now, where was I…? Ah yes, I was about to say hello to you all. Hello! Yet another month has passed and it is my intention to tell you the highlights of the past month (because, otherwise it would go like this: woke up to Zowie chirruping and Ziggy tapping me on the shoulder; got up; made tea, fed the kids and emptied the dishwasher; drank tea, checked emails and weather then did some sudokus (kick-starting the brain) while sitting in bed; had a shower; ate breakfast…etc).

While not necessarily a highlight, the weather does impact our daily lives and particularly what we do and when we do it. This month the weather has remained pretty much as it was in the previous month – we even had some snow in late February! The cold has just rolled on, however, it has just begun to warm up late this week. As a result, the plum blossom blooming has struggled, with the early blooming trees having well and truly finished, while the other trees were really holding off. This time last year the cherry blossom had already started, but there doesn’t appear to be any prospect of that until later this month. The current prediction has it at about the 28^th.

As a result, the plum blossom hunt really just fizzled out. We actually returned to Chishakuin on the 4^th of March, and the trees which were in the process of opening on the 12^th of February were finished, some of the others had opened, but still there were trees which hadn’t. This visit came about thanks to our Israeli friends calling us to see if we were home and would like to meet them there in about an hour, as they were looking for plum blossom. So, we dragged on some suitable clothing and made our way there.

As the blossom wasn’t that great, I suggested we go into the museum and the tea garden area. Despite having visited the temple before they had never been in there, so they thought it was a good idea. The painted screens and fusuma in the museum are worth having a look at (and there is one small panel with some irises that would look very nice in our home!), but the garden area and associated buildings are really lovely. There are some very funny English signs scattered around there too. After that we took Lilia and Yuval up to the back of the temple area, where the hydrangea garden is located, recommending a visit there when they are in bloom. While we were there a stream of Buddhist monks started passing through the area, along the path we were on. As we let them through they all said hello to us, one at a time, and we are talking over twenty monks passing through! There was a lot of bowing and “konnichiwa”s happening 😊.

(Don’t ask me why all the photos in the garden area are hazy – the camera was fine before we went in there, and fine subsequently…)

We did also head off to Nijo-jo late in February as part of the hunt, but that wasn’t overly successful either, despite the website saying that the blossom had started opening in the plum tree grove. The grove is usually closed off to the public, only opening for the blossom season, and we had never been in there – in fact, we didn’t even know there was a plum tree grove in the Nijo-jo grounds. Anyway, it was a glorious clear day, and the walk over there was most pleasant (about 6km). After strolling around the grounds we headed off to find a Starbucks for a matcha latte, then walked back into the centre of town and caught a bus home from there.

The 2nd to bottom sword belonged to Date Masamune (a daimyo or feudal lord) in the 14th century

Our other major outing this month was to visit a temple we hadn’t been to before, but which sounded interesting. Known as Daigoji, this temple is in the mountain range behind us, to the south east and somewhat off the beaten track, so we actually drove there!!! A hermitage was first built there by a Buddhist monk in 874CE and subsequent emperors contributed to the expanding temple complex. The oldest verifiable building in Kyoto, a five-storey pagoda, is located in this complex – completed in 951CE. While the most of the buildings in the complex were destroyed by fire at various time, including during the Onin Wars, this pagoda has survived.

It is a massive temple complex, spread over many hectares up the side of the mountain to the summit. Many of the buildings further up the mountain are looking a little in need of a fresh coat of paint, but otherwise it is really a very nice place to visit, surrounded by forest as you travel up to the middle part of the complex and on. What we did notice is that there are hundreds of cherry trees spread around the complex – so we are hoping to return early in April to see this. The history of the trees is that Toyotomi Hideyoshi had 700 cherry trees planted there in 1598, along with a small temple complex including a garden built, known as Sanboin, to have a huge party where about 1,300 people (including Hideyori (his son), wife, and mistresses) joined him to enjoy the views. They have planted more cherries since, with apparently around 1,000 trees now. Each year, on the 2^nd Sunday of April, they have a festival to celebrate the first hanami party there – we will go there on another day, to avoid the crowds!!!

Note the stepping stones to the fall

In my first post of this year I mentioned that we were feeding some local street cats, and that one of the was an un-desexed female bobtail cat. Last month we decided to try to catch her, before she went on heat. So, we set up a cage on our back deck – and then, the very next day, she went on heat…I knew this because I saw her behaving as a cat on heat does, and then I saw the local tomcat and her, together. So, at this point I knew it was very likely she would be pregnant, which made it even more urgent we catch her.

After three weeks of gaining her trust and feeding her inside the cage, we managed to catch her and carried the very heavy cage around to the front door and into our dining room (no guests…). Last Thursday we took her to the vet, who confirmed her pregnancy and also tested her for diseases (she is clear). Tahlia (as we have re-named her) is due in about four weeks, so we have been busy learning what to do to prepare for this. Tamara, the woman who feeds and desexes local street cat colonies (using donations), lent us the cage and has said she will take the kittens for adoption. More to come…

Yes, that is my finger in there, trying to get her to look at me

As many of you will know, it was Craig’s birthday recently and as there are currently Covid restrictions in place, Craig decided he would like to go out for lunch. He wanted to go to a tempura restaurant that serves some vegan options that we hadn’t previously tried, but when we got there we found a queue waiting to get in. Not wanting to queue for food, we decide to walk on into town and go to Ain Soph (this seems all too familiar!). While walking to the restaurant Craig mentioned that he had seen photos on fb of a large kokeshi doll located at Kiyomizu-dera, so after lunch we stopped by on the way home to have a look. It was huge, and along with that there were two large metal dogs – rather like temple dogs –  on display, all of which was part of a Kyoto crafts festival. The dogs were incredible.

I have one ‘Close Encounters of the Animal Kind’ to mention in this post – while the cage was on our back deck we would leave food out in it, except when we went out and when we went to bed (we learnt the latter was a bad thing because Miro would get very loud if there were any visitors during the night). Anyway, as it got dark, we would leave a light on outside and the curtains open enough so we could monitor who was visiting the food. We always knew if there was a visitor, because the kids would suddenly show a lot of interest out the back. One night they were at the back door checking out a visitor, so we had a look to see who it was, and lo and behold there was a badger!!! I tried to grab a camera, but unfortunately it was scared off before I could get a photo – it was about ½ metre from our back door. Dang.

Finally, before I sign off, I thought I’d mention something about everyday life here – yesterday was 11^th of March, the anniversary of the huge earthquake and tsunami that occurred in 2011. Many ceremonies are held on that day, to pay tribute to those who were lost on that day – around 20,000 people, including those who were confirmed dead and who disappeared. What we didn’t expect, or know was going to occur, was an earthquake drill for all of Kyoto! At 9:30am, our phones started vibrating and then a sound somewhat like a xylophone playing five notes, over an over, commenced. All of this was at full volume. Interesting, because my phone is not set to vibrate and, while it is set at a fairly high volume, it is not on full blast. Subsequently a voice started speaking in Japanese, and this went on for quite a while – from what I could make out, it wasn’t repeating anything, just giving a lot of information. There was also a message on the screen, mostly in Japanese, but there were a few words in English, including ‘This is a drill’. Phew.

That’s all for now.

Cheers!

My latest efforts

A shop across the road from Nijo-jo – for you Steven

Bell detail

L: Spring and time to decorate the streets of Gion

R: A Silver Eye – I finally got a shot of one!

Yes, it’s plum 

Snow still on the mountains late Feb

A Mushroom and “chicken” pie we made

Craig has been baking!

Peonies opening!

That’s it!

Hello, and welcome back to Addams World, where things can happen but not overly much has for the last two years! Most of you will know that Addams World is located within Kyoto city in the lovely eastern hills, along with hundreds of temples and shrines. It is currently still fairly cold here, and we are looking forward to warmer weather in the next month (or so). Setsubun has been and gone and we have undertaken the mamemaki (scattering of lucky roasted soy beans) out the doors, while calling out “Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi!” (literally “Devils out! Fortune in!”) as tradition dictates. This means that, according to the old Japanese calendar, it is now spring.

Being February, it also means that the plum blossom will start blooming at some point during the month – which always cheers me up – and so we have been on the lookout for the early signs in the last couple of weeks. I am finding that it is very important to maintain my focus on having forays and adventures, with specific aims, such as finding plum blossom. The irony has not been lost on me that the whole purpose of moving to Japan and setting up our business here was not only about living in Japan, but having something to keep me occupied and focussed once I retired – something I really wanted to do, that I enjoyed. Here we are, now, after nearly two years during which we have had virtually no guests (I think it now tallies at four people) through no fault of our own, and I am living the life I had intended not to. Still, Kyoto is one of the best places in the world to be superannuated; there are so many places to see and things to do here, even when you are trying to avoid crowded situations.

On that theme, I have always been one to enjoy celebrating things – life, flowers, trees, completing something, etc, so during winter, when it is cold and dreich, it is even more important for me to find things to celebrate (I am not very good at winter). This year, for the very first time, we celebrated Burns Night on 25 January. Having Scottish ancestry (my grandfather Bill’s nickname was Scotty), I have some Scottish items I inherited, including a painting of Rabbie Burns. As coincidence would have it, just prior to Burns Night, we visited the local bottle shop (which just happens to specialise in whisky 😊) and they had some Scottish chips on sale – sea salt and vinegar flavour and haggis flavour!!! We checked them and they were what we call accidentally vegan (not vegan on purpose), so purchased one of each to try.

With that find and an email reminder from a Scottish site that I am subscribed to about Burns Night, it seemed the stars were aligned. We already had our bottle of Aberlour single malt, so that item was ticked off, and I had my Fraser scarf and Scottish brooch, to wear my colours, tick. On the night, we piped in the haggis (chips) via a Youtube video recorded at Edinburgh Castle, and Craig read the Address to a Haggis, the Selkirk Grace and another Rabbie poem, and then we toasted both Rabbie Burns and the haggis. Interestingly, while I was researching Burns Night, I discovered that it has become custom in Scotland to serve a vegetarian/vegan version of the haggis as well as the traditional version.

Och aye the noo!

Returning to the plum blossom hunt, I had seen a photo of a tree with a few blossoms opened on Instagram, so decided to follow that up. So I turned to the electronic oracle and looked up the name of the temple. I found a temple of that name in the Higashiyama hills, about 5km north of us, so we decided to visit on a lovely clear day. It was a nice walk up there, along one of my favourite canals and past Heian Jingu. The temple is known as Konkai Komyo-ji, or Kurodani, and it was first established in 1175 and has continued there, through numerous rebuilds (mostly due to fires). It has a massive cemetery around the main buildings, which is truly beautiful, with a mix of old and new headstones.

Many gravesites have these wooden sticks next to them, and when the wind blows they move, making a clacking noise.

The cemetery is built up the slopes of the hillside, with most of the gravesites facing west, apparently because the Emperor’s palace can be seen from there and there are lovely sunsets over the western mountains. As we were walking through the cemetery we came across one of the monks, and he pointed out that from where we were you could see the skyline of Osaka in the distance (yes, you could…just). Dotted around the grounds of the temple are many statues, mostly of the various Buddhas, of many sizes. Some are bronze but most are stone, and there are some very interesting statues, including a very unusual statue of Goko Shiyui Amidabutsu, a Buddha with very big hair! It looks like he has an afro hairdo, but it is supposed to show that he spent so much time sitting meditating that his hair grew very long.

!!!

There were some nice gardens within the temple precinct, which we had hoped to go into, but they didn’t seem to be open…

What we found, though, was that this was not the temple with the plum blossom trees – there is another temple known as Komyo-ji to the west of this temple but which didn’t come up in my search. The oracle moves (or shows results) in mysterious ways, it seems. Having said that, I was very glad we went there, it was an amazing place. As it happened, while we were walking back down from the temple, we came across another largish temple which I had a very quick peek at to see if there was anything worth looking at and, lo and behold, there was a very old plum blossom tree planted in a quadrangle area, which had some blooms already open. Kismet.

Last weekend we met up with one of the two men who put together the tapas event held here. We had a very nice lunch at a felafel restaurant and then caught a train home, as we had walked the 6km to get there. I decided to walk through the grounds of Chishakuin temple, which is a large temple near our home, to check out their plum trees (the hunt is still on) and quite a few of them had some open blossoms. The sky was intense blue and most of the plum trees there are the dark pink variety, so it looked very nice. Along with this, it was the time of day when they were engaging in chanting, with groups in at least two of the buildings. So, all in all, a wonderful detour. Next week we will continue the hunt…

The chanting halls

Newly painted details

One small item I forgot to mention in my last post, was the new shikishi we bought at the Ebisu festival. This has become a bit of a ritual for us, as there is a good shop which is always open for the festival and the woman who owns it is a very nice person – she always recognises us! This year, we bought a lovely painting of a Silver eye bird in a plum blossom tree. Gorgeous.

Finally, because I know everyone is very keen to see how my Ikebana is going, here are my latest attempts.

Cheers!

Like many other temples and shrines, Komyo-ji has decorated its  hand washing area to prevent COVID spread. Is this Queen duck with her male concubine and guards?

Reflections

A new Aston Martin…sigh 

Toy kitchen items at Costco…very realistic

More Valentines chocolate items, including medical first aid items!!!

The world through cat’s eyes?

Nice and warm

Hello all, and welcome to 2022! Ok, I know it’s a little way into the year already, but for this blog it is the start of the year. The year of the Tiger, and I’m hoping that a cat, a very big and fearsome cat, may frighten off both The Virus and those who seem hellbent on spreading it, or letting it spread. This really is a make or break year for us – I don’t think the government can continue to hand out support to businesses, and we have fixed costs to cover, so there has to be a point at which we will just not be able to continue. I am still hopeful it won’t come to this…fingers crossed.

It is, of course, winter here at the moment, and while it has not been as cold overall as last year (Goddy still hasn’t been out for a skate), there has been some snow. The first snow we had was on 26 December, and we have had further light falls since then, with heavier falls on New Year’s Eve and then on the 14^th of this month.

This morning, however, we woke up to quite a covering (which we didn’t expect) – a very white morning, and it was still snowing. It didn’t stop snowing until just before 1pm. So, while Friday is ballet day, I decided to delay my class until tomorrow and go out to have a look around. This is the heaviest fall we have had since January 2017, which was considerably heavier, but still it was nice to see.

Weather aside, the last month has been quite eventful for us, with many things happening, with most of them involving food in some way. Starting before xmas, we were asked to provide some food for an end of year event for some students and staff at Kyoto University, where our friend Lilia has been studying for a postgraduate qualification. This was going to be her final event, as she has now handed in her thesis, and she told the organisers that she wanted to have some proper vegan food, since all the others attending would be getting something substantial to eat. She suggested we could cater for her and a couple of others who were vegetarians.

We didn’t know what the others would be getting, and the organiser didn’t get in touch by email, as he was supposed to, so we decided to make some bread and lasagna. After checking with Lilia re the cost, we then made enough for at least eight people, and added some mini ‘sausage rolls’. Apparently it was very successful, with many people enjoying the food. Funnily enough, I later found a message request on Instagram, with the organiser asking us to provide some hummus – nothing else! Interestingly, the other people got pizza…

On xmas day we had our neighbour friend over for dinner, which was most pleasant and we also caught up with some of our Oz friends for xmas and New Year’s Eve. Subsequently, we had our Spanish friend, Nacho, here with his business partner to make lunch for us – a trial run of the food they were thinking of serving at their tapas event. It was very nice food, and it was really nice to have someone cooking for us, in our kitchen! Nacho decided to go ahead with the tapas event, scheduling it for the 15th of January.

He advertised it one week before the event (!) and in the end we had two sittings, the first with six people (two cancelled at the last minute), and the second with eight. Overall, it went well, though Craig and I ended up helping a lot, mainly as kitchenhands. We also provided all the drinks and Craig cooked apple galette for dessert. The guests seemed to enjoy the lunch, and it helped Nacho and his friend get an idea of what they would need to improve and how to run a restaurant.

We also had our friends, Lilia and Yuval over for dinner during this period, serving up a Tex Mex meal, which was fun. We hadn’t seen them for a while (although we had corresponded via Instagram) as they had been back to Israel for a month, and then had to quarantine on their return. About a week later we met up with them to attend the annual Ebisu festival, which we have been to before. This year there were many more food stalls lining the streets around the shrine, with fewer other stalls selling Ebisu souvenirs and other craft items. We ate some samosas at the same stall as we do every year, and they were still as good as they always have been.

The final food related item is about our feeding of a couple of local street cats. It started with just one cat, who we called Ralphy because we weren’t sure of the sex of the cat. We did know, however, that she (as it turned out) had been desexed. Within two weeks another cat turned up, a bobtail cat with very long legs who we have called Elle McPhearless. Elle doesn’t appear to have been desexed, and we are considering trapping her soon to remedy this problem.

The watcher…

The watched...

Ralphy looked a lot healthier than Elle, and she was a lot less afraid of me when I went out to put the food out. Both of them disappeared about two weeks ago, after a biggish ginger tom came to visit. Ralphy has not come back since, but Elle returned after a few days, and has been eating here ever since. The tom, as far as we know, has not returned. Very suddenly, a few days ago, Elle’s behaviour changed a bit, with her actually staying nearby while I put out the food, and she has even mewed at me a few times 😊. She definitely has the endemic Japanese bobtail cat genes in her.

The two final things for this post, are not food related, with the first being about my new hobby – Ikebana. As may be fairly obvious from reading my blog, I love flowers. I have always been interested in Ikebana, but hadn’t really done much about it, until I bought one of the kenzan (which literally means sword mountain), the spiky plates you stick the stems onto. I have a few vases, but what I really wanted was a bowl to create arrangements using the kenzan. This is called the moribana style.

Kenzan

So, I decided to go to the Toji antiques market on 21 December, to see if I could find an old, more rustic looking bowl. This is the last market of the year, and just before xmas…Unsurprisingly, there were many people there, so it took quite a while to get around and, despite it being designated the antiques market, there were many other stalls there. As it happens I didn’t find any secondhand bowls the ‘grabbed me’. I did, however, find one stall of new pottery, being run by the maker, which had the more rustic style I was looking for – so I ended up buying one of them.

I have watched a few people building arrangements, and seen quite a few different Ikebana arrangements, so I had some basic idea of what I wanted to do. Once the shops re-opened after new year, I went to the local florist and found a few flowers I thought would work well together, and, combined with some new year’s greenery (houses are often decorated with greenery for good luck, especially pine) I put together my first arrangement.

Since then I have started reading an Ikebana book, and have updated my arrangement as parts died off. I am looking forward to creating with different flowers, stems and leaves as the seasons roll through 😊. I have also used my favourite vase to create little arrangements for our living area.

Finally, I am including the ceramic juunishi that I have bought for this year. The juunishi are the twelve animals of the zodiac, generally known as the Chinese zodiac. The Japanese adopted these many centuries ago, and each year ceramic figurines of the relevant animal are sold and displayed for good luck. They can also be made from papier mache or fabric. This year is the year of the Tiger, and I have made it a habit to buy one for our front desk and one for the car. Sometimes finding a figurine that isn’t too kawaii can be tricky, this is especially true for tigers. After much searching around I finally found two which I was happy with. I was particularly happy finding a somewhat cubist style tiger.

Cheers for now!

Must haves/do’s for new year – door decoration, visit to shrine, Kabuki on TV

An Aussie at the Toji market

!!!

Outside a hairdressing salon

Our own snow creation

How many cooks does it take to weigh something?

Zowie wasn’t overly fussed by the arrangement, but the water, on the other hand…

A new type of parsley?

Here’s the answer to the naming issue!

Valentine’s Day is coming, and the chocolate displays have started – yes, they are all packaging for chocolate

Look – something for us!!! Very nice they were too

I really like Starbucks in the BAL building

A new little art gallery near us

Has she been keeping something from us?

Creepy dolls in a secondhand shop window…

…but, it’s not over yet!!!

I just like this vase

Bye from Ziggy!

Autumn, and you know what that means…yes, many, many photos of trees. So, welcome to the tree episode for 2021. In fact, this is the last episode for this year; let’s hope that next year is better for all of us.

For now, let us concentrate on trees for a while. Wonderful things, trees:- breathe in carbon dioxide, breathe out oxygen, some provide fruits and on top of that they are just plain beautiful, especially at this time of the year. Reviewing the photos for this episode, I noticed that they look quite different to last year, which was just an explosion of colour. This year the ‘colouring’ happened more slowly, with the trees changing in a staggered kind of way, with some fully in colour, some still to reach their peak and the rest had already passed their peak. The other difference this year is that the trees that aren’t deciduous are much greener than in the recent past. Obviously they enjoyed the massive amount of rain we had this year.

A quick report on the weather – it’s cold! Last time I said I thought I would be in a puffy jacket within the month, well, I have been wearing a puffy jacket for most of the time since then. Yesterday there was snow here, not much, but enough to cover the cars in the carpark across the road and to have a helicopter flying over our house before 7:30am – likely the media filming the snow on the hills. The max on Saturday was 6C. It is warming up a bit over the rest of the week, into the low teens, but back to sub-10C by Sunday.

Shortly after my last post we went out for a long walk, going back to Takao and following the Kyoto trail from there. This time we walked much further, with our total distance for the day being around 15km. It was a glorious day, slightly cool, but sunny and the Autumn colours were beautifully lit up.

We went back to Jingo-ji, the temple at the top of the hill accessed via a somewhat strenuous climb up many stairs (not sure how many, but it has to be well past 100 stairs), to see the Autumn colours there and to try to capture a photo of Craig throwing one of the kawarake disks out into the valley. Try, I said, because as you can see, I managed to capture Craig after he had released the kawarake and it had flown off into the valley. Ah well, there’s always next time.

???

No, definitely gone

One of the restaurants on the climb up to the temple

We walked a lot further along the river than we did last time, through beautiful scenery, and really enjoyed it. Some parts of the trail further along the river requires climbing over bigger rocks, and there was one part where you had to pull yourself up and over a rock using a rope attached to the hillside, but nothing really dangerous, though you definitely need a good pair of walking shoes. Some parts of the trail were a little soggier than last time, thanks to some overnight rain, but we managed to get through without getting our shoes too wet (or slipping).

The trail took us out towards the town of Kameoka, and, as a result, we ended up walking along the Hozugawa, the river we have traversed a few times in a boat. I didn’t make the connection, after we had passed through a tunnel, that the river we were walking along was the Hozugawa until I started hearing a familiar noise – the noise of the oar moving through the rope as the oarsman rowed. Sure enough, below us we saw the bow of one of the boats (the road we were on was a long way above the river level.

The tunnel, for cars and hikers…

I wasn’t sure if anyone on the boat could see us through the trees, but when I waved we had a number wave back, including the guys rowing and steering the boat. We saw a few more boats after that, as we walked along the road, waving and saying hello (ok, that was me…). The road we were on wound on, and once we had eaten our packed lunch, we decided not to continue on to Kameoka, but to go to the train station which would take us back to Kyoto station. Interestingly, it was the first station I have ever been to that was located on a bridge, between the tunnels through the hills.

The view from the station bridge – yes, there is a boat down there!

There were a lot more people traversing the trail this time, mainly because of the Autumn factor, but also The Virus numbers were way down, so people just wanted to get out. Much safer to go outdoors and get some exercise than sit inside somewhere surrounded in close proximity by potential health threats. Interestingly, there were a few hiking groups we passed, and a number of runners – yes, they were running the trail. Walking, hiking and running are definitely favoured pastimes here, for all ages.

During this period we took a few other walks, including a walk into town to buy some provisions, and we went for a walk to Fushimi Inari via the Kyoto trail with another acquaintance of ours who lives nearby. We had invited him over to dinner late in November to discuss the possibility of him trialling his idea for a restaurant, serving tapas (he is Spanish), using our venue for a few pop-up nights. He enjoys walking too, so we suggested walking to Mt Inari via the forest road, which he hadn’t tried before.

The walk into town

To Fushimi Inari and then Vermillion for a matcha latte (yum)

It was a lovely, sunny day again, and we would have gone to the top, but I had hurt my back (not sure how) and it involved a pinched nerve, so I decided climbing too many stairs may not be overly comfortable. Thankfully my back is nearly back to ‘normal’ and I can sit fairly comfortably again. Craig, on the other hand, appears to have damaged his hamstring and is struggling a bit. Must be the time of the year – our neighbour, Rachel, has also hurt her back!

There are a few more things to mention in this post, the first being ‘ii fufu no hi’, which essentially means good couple day in Japanese, occurring on 22 November. The name comes from a play on words for the pronunciation of the numbers 1-1-2-2 (the dates are ordered differently here, with the year first, then month, then the day). So, 1 in Japanese is ichi, and 2 is nichi, or futatsu, which then becomes i-i-fu-fu (if you shorten the words). Japanese people love plays on words, especially using numbers. In fact I actually did this to create Miro’s name, which is a play on ‘3 colours’ – 3 is san or mitsu and colour is iro, hence Miro (mi-iro squashed together). It was just pure chance that it is also the name of one of my favourite artists.

The next thing is another mention of one of our neighbours – Mrs Takeuchi. She is a lovely old woman (not sure how old, but I suspect she is in her late 80s, if not her early 90s). Recently we were tidying up our yard for winter and moving a few plants around. Anyway, we were near the front of our house and I was trying to dig into the ground in an area we hadn’t done much with before, ie it was very hard and full of stones, rocks, a brick, etc. Mrs Takeuchi was walking past and saw me struggling with the spade. She came over and said something to the effect that we would be better off with something we could use to break the ground.

As she rushed off Craig took over and had a bit more luck, managing to pull out a brick and a few other items. When she returned, she had two hoe-like tools, both of which were taller than she is (she is considerably shorter than I am). Anyway, she essentially told us to stand back and took to the ground with the three pronged hoe, and she wasn’t holding back!!! Within ten minutes she had done the whole garden bed and then made water channels around the plants we had put in the bed. She is incredibly strong, despite her stooped posture and short stature. Made us feel a little embarrassed – here we are, decades younger than her and we are standing watching her pound the ground with her gardening tools!

These are the kind of tools she returned with, but they had longer handles

The last thing I wanted too make mention of is our anniversary, which occurs on 15 December. This year we celebrated 30 years of marriage and 32 years together. Where did all that time go? We have been through so much together, yet it doesn’t seem that long to me. There have been good times, and bad, highs and lows, yet we have had each other through it all. Sometimes it’s me pulling Craig through, sometimes it’s Craig pulling me through. Together. My best friend. Mon amour.

Setting an Addams table – Craig bought me some flowers to add

The special anniversary portrait…

Well, that’s all for now

Cheers and enjoy your Summer Solstice, xmas and new year.

All the statues in this area had new outfits!

I see so many…

What we do with our shadows

There are still some flowers around

A very flat tree

The crack in the sky – and what is happening in the second photo? Looks a bit like some smoky dragon moving through (or maybe wraiths?).

This place looked abandoned. I would love to have it as a holiday house!!!

There must be fireflies in this area, another reason to have a holiday house there!

Autumn decorations

A sight you see often here at this time of year – kaki (persimmon) hanging out to dry

Anniversary flowers up close

Photos of us…proving yet again that I just cannot take a good photo – I always pull faces when I know the camera is on me.

Bye!

Hi everyone – here I am back at the keyboard again, reviewing the month that was. So, Halloween has been and gone and now we are heading towards Winter Solstice and year’s end. Wow, time really is moving along, and still we await a significant easing of The Virus situation. The new case numbers here have dropped very significantly, and are currently as low as they have been since the end of June last year. Fingers crossed that it stays that way, however, preparations for the sixth wave continue. Better to be prepared…

We keep looking to the government to ease foreign entry quarantine restrictions, but there is no definite news on that front yet. So, we continue to bide our time, although we are tentatively making more outside forays. Craig has returned to his bi-weekly gym visits and I will be doing the same come December. Interestingly, I feel a lot stronger in my ballet barre work now than I have for a very long time. The four times a week regime I have adopted at home, and the exercises in the Dutch National Ballet videos, together have been very beneficial. I am wondering if returning to the twice a week visits to the gym and twice a week at home regimen may actually set me back a bit. The positives, however, include mixing with others and doing some centre work.

Turning to the weather; I mentioned last time that there had been a sudden change in the weather just before I wrote Episode 10, with the temperature dropping around 10C, on average. This pattern has continued, with all days being low 20s/high teens – the quilts are well and truly out and the floor heater has been in use every evening since then. I have yet to resort to the puffy jackets, but I suspect that may occur in the next month.

So, what have we been doing in the last month? We have had a few excursions (though one of those was as a result of making a mistake) and we had a visitor who we had met via the Kyoto vegan meet-up group. Isi is a young woman from Scotland who is doing a thesis about veganism in Japan, particularly in the Kansai region, for a course she is studying. We were her first guinea pigs the first people she interviewed on this topic. She is a lovely person and it was interesting to hear what specifically she was examining. I think she was very keen to test the questions she had devised and maybe explore some areas a little further as a result.

Our first excursion was a walk from our home to Fushimi Inari via the forest path. It is a really lovely walk and being cooler we decided to go all the way up the mountain to the peak. Having not been on many walks for a while, it was harder than I remembered it being, but it was good for us to stretch our legs and breath the fresh air of the forest. Once we reached the bottom of the walk, we went to a café for a very nice matcha latte (made with soy milk). Interestingly, there were many new torii along the trail, with some being painted as we walked through. I wonder if the sheer number of new gates is an indicator of how many businesses are now getting close to real difficulties, hoping for divine intervention.

Spirits of the forest?

Yum!

For Halloween we decided to try Vegan Ramen UZU, as it appeared it was open again. You may recall we went there for my birthday only to find it was temporarily closed. This time it was indeed open, and we were the first there waiting for it to open for the dinner seating. As this restaurant was recently listed in the Michelin Guide, we thought we should get there early, just in case others were also keen to try it out. Just before opening time a waiter came to check if we had a booking (which we had done earlier when we first arrived at the door, and one of the staff kindly came out and did this for us).

As we waited he asked us where we were from and we did our usual “from Australia, but we live in Kyoto” routine, which often includes us saying that we run a guest house. At this point, the waiter said he had heard about us, from a friend, and remembered we were called ‘sanbiki neko’ 😊. This is the first time anyone had actually said they had heard of our business and made us feel quite pleased.

The interior of the restaurant was amazing – very dark, almost entirely black, with one huge table which seated 16 diners, eight on each side. The artwork was across the entire wall at the head of the table, and the walls behind the diners on each side were entirely covered by mirrors. Each seat had a glass place setting (stuck to the table) and a single down light above the setting (but not too bright, just focussed on the food). The effect was like being inside the spaceship in 2001: A Space Odyssey, with the reflections in the mirrors appearing to curve up and away from the table. The food was good, but the entrée and the dessert were amazing. It was also the first time I had ever drunk gin and soda – but actually it was quite good. The gin was delicate; locally made.

Me being drawn into the artwork

The final two excursions were to the southern reaches of Kyoto prefecture, the Kizugawa area. Each year, since 2010, the Kizugawa Art event has been held, with many artists and local citizens contributing to the event. The event came about as a result of the creation of Kizugawa city in 2007, which subsumed three towns – Kizu, Kamo and Yamashiro. Apparently locals had felt the history and culture of the respective towns was disappearing, so, as the website says, “a culture that is over a millennium old is passed down as our pride” through this event.

Poems about Kizugawa and the surrounding land appear in the Nara era’s (710-784CE) Manyoshu (an anthology of Japanese poetry), and during this era, the capital was moved to Kunikyo, which later became Kamo, for a few years from 740-744CE. The event’s purpose is to “recognize anew this city that is modern, yet ancient, and beautiful at once” through the power of art.

We saw snippets of the event on tv and decided to go, so I went to the event website to find out exactly where it was. The problem was that the map and instructions were loaded onto the site as a picture, so I couldn’t translate it using Google (as I usually do). I printed the map and took that with us. Unfortunately, what I didn’t realise was that the event wasn’t near the Kizu train station, which is what the map appeared to show (I should have known better, we have been mislead by maps here before, with even locals not knowing how to read them).

As a result we spent a few hours walking around completely the wrong area, having crossed the wrong bridge over the Kizu river. It was a lovely sunny day and a very pleasant walk, however, we ended up walking in a huge circle (around 6kms) trying to work out where the installations were. I eventually gave up and asked some locals in an auto repair business, and luckily one of them knew about the event (!!!) and said we were a long (long) way from where we should be.

Two works of art, but not what we were looking for!

Not to be beaten, we decided to go back and try again the following Saturday, also a nice day (thankfully). This time we caught another train to the Kamo station from Kizu station, found the shuttlebus and made our way to the starting point. It was a very long walk making our way around the installations (well, we missed a few, but saw most of the 20 installation sites). We’re not sure how far it was, but our best guess is somewhere between 8-10 kms. Some were in open spaces, some at specific homes and some at shrines. It was very interesting seeing the different works and a lot of fun. The Kamo area was really very nice, with many old homes, and a lot of rice and vegetable fields and tea plantations. I’m very glad we went back to try again.

Harvested rice

Finally, a quick Close Encounters of the Animal Kind entry to note the man with a meerkat on a lead we saw on the way to shopping one day (I kid you not – we both did a double take), and my attempts to capture a good photo of a Hummingbird Moth, which was moving around the lantana we have in the backyard (which I keep because it draws many different flying insects into our yard). I had the ‘big’ camera set to rapid fire shooting, and managed to get around 20 shots of the moth, with two being, well, ok. It moved so fast, that I spent a lot of time just trying to keep up with its movements.

Cheers for now!

L: Another perspective, R: Barrel of Monkeys

I call it ‘Wind’

“If you touch me one more time…”

Dr Seuss lives here

Interesting additions to home entries

Old kitchen cooker

Ahhh, Halloween

? Had some pieces left over?

The fire brigade does some exercises – I think…

I just have to take them now…

These lovely late 60s early 70s side tables sitting outside on a balcony gradually rotting…

Lovely entries

Some very old cycads

Autumn colour cometh

Hard to run while not tripping on the cross bars and not touching the uprights!!!

Good boy…

Hello, and welcome back! October!!! A big month, mainly because it is Halloween month, my favourite spooky time of the year. I love putting up the decorations – witches, bats, ghouls, vampires, skeletons, etc – and it is so much the better here, as they embrace the season with enthusiasm (ok, mainly for retail purposes, but I take what I can get 😊).

Zowie as decoration

Now to the weather. I have to say that it really has been glorious since my last post, with most days being high 20s/low 30s, sometimes sunny, sometimes not and not too much rain. That is, until three days ago, when it suddenly became cool; literally overnight. One night we were still sleeping under a sheet, with the fan on low, the next night it was time for a quilt. It seems that a big mass of cold air has moved down from Siberia-way and cooled things down across most of the country – they have even had sub-zero overnight temperatures up north over the last three nights.

Is this a harbinger of things to come this winter? We have been told that the ‘weather people’ (whoever they are) are expecting it to be a cold winter. Colder than last winter? Will Godzilla go out skating again? We are well prepared personally, so we’ll just have to make sure we prepare the garden better by moving the plants in pots under cover and anything else we can do to make sure it is as best prepared as possible.

The other big question is, of course, what next for The Virus? Things move slowly here, on the whole, although the vaccination process has been very good after a slow start. It also seems the people have finally taken on board the danger the Delta Variant poses, with the infection numbers very suddenly dropping. Researchers indicate that it has largely been due to the unvaccinated being a lot more careful.

The state of emergency was lifted at the end of September, and so far the numbers have remained down. I have to say, I was a little nervous that we may have a repeat of last time, especially when the late news on 1 October had two items re The Virus – the first talking to bar owners and restaurateurs who were very keen to start selling alcohol again and stay open later. They were saying that at first the patrons were a little wary coming back, but once they had a few drinks in them they loosened up, and this made the owners and staff happy…

The other item was about the pandemic experts and medicos making preparations for the sixth wave!!!! Already! Ok, so good to be prepared, but I really hope it proves to be unnecessary. Let’s hope the cooler weather doesn’t bring on a surge, too. I am being hopeful that we will indeed have guests staying with us again next year. In fact, we took a booking for three people in April recently! Some Australians who have decided to be optimistic and get in early. It cheered us up – a lot.

We have had two at home dinners with friends since we last spoke; one with our Israeli friends and a pizza night with our friend from down the road, a small birthday repast. For our Israeli friends we made an Afghan meal and played Carcassonne, since they had indicated they would like to play a board game with us (we do have a largish collection of games). Craig also made one of the recipes he has learnt through the patisserie course he is doing, which was very (very) nice. A fun night.

Craig’s pistachio cream with praline topping tarts. Yum. (Zowie as photo-bombing decoration)

This being October, it was time for my annual birthday excursion. This year I decided it was finally time to make the long (and somewhat expensive) journey to the Tsujikawayama Park – land of the youkai. Yes it is a mouthful; Tsujikawa being the local river, yama meaning mountain and youkai being supernatural entities and spirits in Japanese folklore. Youkai are not literally demons in the sense of the word as we understand it, but are instead spirits and entities whose behaviour can range from malevolent or mischievous to friendly, fortuitous or even helpful to humans. What better way to celebrate my birthday and Halloween all at once?

A selection of the many, many youkai

The drive takes about three hours if you don’t take the toll roads, hence the somewhat expensive part as it takes just over half the time to get there via the tolls, clearly the better option. It took about 1 hour and 40 minutes to get there (a bit longer on the way back as one side of one of the expressways was having road works done). The park itself is free to enter and is located in a town called Fukusaki. It was created to celebrate the birthplace of Yanagita Kunio (1875–1962), a famous Japanese scholar and folklorist. In his study of regional lore, Yanagita revealed a particular interest in tales involving youkai, hence the park has various youkai statues and two mechanical youkai attractions. His childhood home, which is now owned by the city of Fukusaki, is also part of the park.

Apparently Yanagita called his home the smallest house in Japan

The statues are really amazing in detail. Along with all the statues, every fifteen minutes a kappa (water sprite or river monster) rises out of the pond, and a few minutes later a winged tengu flies out of a nearby small tower, upside down (don’t know why). It is a lot of fun and children seem to like it too, despite them being ‘monsters’. On the other hand, a small dog that accompanied a woman there did not like any of the monsters, and barked at all of them as it came to them. Unsurprisingly, we were the only non-Japanese people there, and, interestingly, a lot of the Japanese people that were visiting the park were dressed traditionally.

Apart from the park, there is a bit of a trail around the town, with ‘bench youkai’ placed in front of some of the businesses there. Unfortunately some of the businesses appear to have closed down, and some of the benches had been moved, so we didn’t find all of them in the end, especially as we had limited time since the journey there and back took a while. We did, however, make sure we found the nekomata. The nekomata is a kind of cat youkai which has two tails and can either be of a type that live in the mountains, or domestic cats that have grown old and transformed into youkai. Funnily enough, sometimes we think Miro is a nekomata, with the sounds she makes when playing with Zowie, although she doesn’t have two obvious tails. She did belong to a colony of cats that live here in the foothills, though…

What’s with the head of that horse???

It was a lot of fun taking photos with the youkai, and as we returned to the park to get our car we found a large plant nursery which had a good collection of larger trees and shrubs, something we haven’t found within the confines of Kyoto. We were looking for a replacement for a couple of plants which have suffered from both the cold winter and then the very wet and overcast summer, and we found larger plants than we already had and a lot cheaper than smaller versions here.

We actually went to see the youkai a few days before my birthday, as the weather was pretty good and we had planned to go out to dinner on my birthday and thought it may be difficult to fit all of this in on one day. So, for my birthday I had decided I would like to go to a vegan ramen restaurant which is a bit more upmarket than the places we usually go to, ie more expensive, and it was designed by teamLab. Unfortunately, when we got to the location it was closed. There was no warning on their website, but it coincided with the opening of a new restaurant in Tokyo, so it is likely they were there helping them learn the ropes.

Through the door…the teamLab artwork constantly changes

In the end we walked into the city centre and went to Ain Soph, not quite as ‘upmarket’ but we know the burgers are good and they serve wine there. I suppose we’ll just have to wait until the ramen restaurant re-opens here, maybe around New Year, to give us time to save up some money!

Before I sign off, I thought I’d mention a visit we had from our backdoor neighbours, the people who own the pottery kiln behind us, and includes the lovely stone wall at the back of our yard. In that wall a fig tree has sprouted at some point – how this happened, I don’t know, but it is quite healthy and a reasonable size. This is the tree the monkeys and badgers came here for last year. A group of four of the family arrived at our front door, a youngish couple, their son and grandma – likely great grandma to the boy. It seems that she was very worried about the tree, that it was causing us a burden looking after it, and she wanted to ask us if they could help look after it. We told them, as best we could, that we were perfectly happy looking after the tree, that we loved having it there and it was absolutely no burden to us – though it took some convincing. She is a lovely old woman who has always been very friendly to us. Nice to have good neighbours.

That’s all for now – enjoy Halloween!

Cheers!

Very bright green old library house in Fukusaki

Hhhmmmm

Restaurant near the park

Old building de-constructing…

For you, Steven

The sometimes very confusing expressways

L: When a road becomes a carpark        R: A very large ferris wheel

Many tunnels through the mountains 

My birthday night – the Teremachi; Tanouki already preparing for xmas; me in one of my new masks

My first personal Halloween decoration

Just happened to see movement in the pond before the kappa arose

Huge preying mantis, which flew across the street in front of us

Turns out this is what a Red Helen caterpillar looks like – when it is eating our lemon tree…

Impressive display of pitcher plants

At first I thought it was a UFO…

Bye

Hello one and all, here I am again and it’s already mid-September! Hard to reconcile just how long this dang pandemic has been going on now, with time being much more fluid than I ever remember it being. Staying at home a lot can do this. Hopefully this will change in the near future, with both Craig and I having had our second jab enabling us to return to ‘outside home’ activities soon, such as going to the gym. Craig will be resuming more ‘normal’ activities before me, as I suspended my gym membership until December a while ago because I thought we weren’t going to get the vaccine as soon as we ended up doing. Sometimes things move faster than you expect!

One thing I will be doing, in regards to out of home activities, is to continue wearing a mask and sanitising, to be extra safe and because I have liked the fact that I have had very little in the way of colds and flu since The Virus became part of our lives. I now have a collection of nice masks and am completely used to wearing them – so much so that sometimes I forget I have one on and try to have a drink/put something in my mouth/smell something without moving it out of the way 😊. Thankfully I haven’t had any bad accidents yet. I also have a special Halloween mask on order which I am really looking forward to getting soon.

Hehehe

Weather-wise, while the rain continues, on and off, there has been a fairly significant change temperature-wise. Previously, most days were 35-36C max when it wasn’t raining, but we are now having days in the high 20s to low 30s. Does this mean autumn has arrived early, as nearly every weather pattern has this year? Who knows, but the rain continues, at the moment thanks to a typhoon which came up the China coast towards us. It had been weakening as it approached, then it fell apart and reformed, changing direction in the process, and headed directly towards Kyushu and Honshu. Currently it is south of us and has brought yet more rain, but not as much as they expected.

The other day I did some quick estimating and realised that we have had somewhere between 1.5 and 2 metres of rain here since the rainy season started (early) in May this year. It also occurred to me that in that one week where we had very heavy rain, we actually had about the same amount as Adelaide has in an average year. Pity we can’t find room to fit a rainwater tank here somewhere. All this rain has come at a cost, though, not just in terms of flooding and loss of life, but also in terms of fruit and vegetable crops (and, no doubt, grain crops). With it being overcast on so many of the days since spring, it has impacted growth of the crops and also caused a lot of water damage. Some of our plants have died, but we’re not sure if it is lack of sun, too much water, nutrients being washed out of the soil, or anything else.

Yet again we haven’t been out much, but we do need to get some exercise and a change of scenery occasionally, so I try to think of places we haven’t been to and which are relatively safe, though most excursions do necessitate some public transport usage, where you have to be much more aware of your surroundings, including the people. Ventilation is key, so I try to find seating near an open window or air vent, and maintain appropriate distancing. I also never touch anything with my hands…shades of Howard Hughes?

Our first excursion during this period took us to a sake brewery, which we discovered was fairly close to us. We had bought a small bottle for a birthday celebration (yes you, Steven!) because it was made in Kyoto and had a special Gion Matsuri label, which looked suitably festive. It actually was very nice, so hence worth a visit to the brewery. Unfortunately, with the ‘state of emergency’ restrictions, which consist almost entirely of restricting public alcohol imbibement, it meant we couldn’t taste anything, which was disappointing (I suppose we should have anticipated this, but a tasting is vastly different to social drinking, or should be). Anyway, we decided to buy another bottle in their range, which also has a very nice label, as it happens.

Boots made of reeds or grass

Sake paraphernalia

How many cedar balls do you need?

After this slight disappointment, we went to Vegan Farm, a green grocer and other vegan foods shop, to buy a bento lunch which we ate next to the nearby canal. While we waited for them to cook our lunch (they had run out of cooked rice), we introduced ourselves to the owner, who was there that day. He was very excited that we had a vegan business and decided to video us talking about our business, to upload to Instagram. We didn’t quite understand exactly what he wanted at first, so it was a little stilted, but Craig ended up getting the gist before I did, so he said a few things.

Once we had eaten our lunch, we decided to walk into town to visit a supermarket there which has a few things that we wanted, and we can’t get elsewhere now (one of our favourite supermarkets recently closed down, so we are having to find these items elsewhere). A reasonable walk in humidity, but good for us none-the-less, particularly in terms of vitamin D, which is much reduced being indoors so much.

For our other excursion, I decided to take the plunge and visit Osaka. This came about for two reasons, Craig needed some baking equipment as he is currently doing a vegan patisserie course (an online course) which necessitates these items, and we had two tickets to an art gallery in the Umeda Sky Building in Osaka, which had to be used within 6 months, and they were due to expire mid-October. These tickets were given to us by the lovely couple I have previously mentioned who sent us a Thai cookbook as a gift.

The building is known as the Sky Bridge due to it’s unusual design. It is the 19^th tallest building in Osaka (there are many tall buildings there), and has a circular platform on top, giving 365 degree views of the city. It consists of two 40-storey towers that connect at their two uppermost stories, with bridges and two escalators crossing the wide space in the centre. To get to the top you have to take an escalator to the 3^rd floor, then a lift up to the 35^th floor. Most of the ride up in the glass lift (which is a very fast, ear-popping experience), is via a glass encased open metal structure, so you can watch the ground fall away 😊. Once on the 35^th floor you exit the lift and walk around to an escalator which takes you up to the 39^th floor, also quite a quick journey and inside a glass encased open metal structure.

The close-up shows the outside lift shaft and the two escalators across the gap

No light at the end of this tunnel!

To get to the roof observatory area it costs ¥1,000 per person, which we decided was a little too much for our budget for the day. So we went into the gift shop, looked around and then made the fast return journey down. There were only three other people that we encountered who were going up, so it was very quiet. After that, we went into the other tower and up to the 27^th floor to visit the Koji Kinutani Gallery, Koji Kinutani (1943-) being the artist whose work is exhibited there.

How does this artist have a gallery all of his own? Well, he has won many prizes for his works and he was designated a ‘Person of Cultural Merit’ by the Japanese government in 2014, and Sekisui House is the gallery sponsor. According to his bio, “He mastered fresco technique at Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and the Academy of Fine Arts of Venice. In 1974, Kinutani became the youngest winner of the Yasui Prize, a touchstone for young Japanese painters. Since then, his works have been awarded other important prizes, such as the Nihon Geijutsu Taishō (Grand Prize for Japanese Fine Arts), Mainichi Art Award, and an award from the Japan Art Academy. He also designed the official poster of the Nagano Winter Olympics in 1998 and installed public art on the walls of Shibuya Station in 2008.”

We had no idea what to expect, but I am incredibly glad we were given these tickets. His works are very big and bright and really amazing. I have to say I kept wondering if he had been taking psychedelic drugs at some point, because his works really do look a bit like that. Before we went in to view his paintings and sculptures, we were given 3-D glasses and told to wait in a smallish curved wall room until the attendant let us into the small theatrette, which was the other half of the full spherical space. Inside there was a huge curved screen, measuring 3m x 14m wide. Standing waiting for our cue, I was trying to work out what we were going to see…

  This sculpture was about 2m in height

The bottom two photos are the only ones we could take in the gallery, all the others are lifted from the internet

Well, I can honestly say it was one of the most amazing experiences I have ever had – I just wanted to stay in there after it finished and watch it again (and again,…). Basically it was an animation of a number of his paintings, which you literally flew into and around in. Phenomenal. It felt like you were immersed in the painting, moving in all directions, and there were things coming towards you, including some interesting flying things and at least twice a huge Japanese-style dragon came directly at you, mouth open! I can’t understate how much I loved it. If we get a chance, I really want to go back again just to sit through it (Float through it? Fly through it?). The best thing was that we were the only people there, so we were able to wander around at our own pace, uninterrupted.

How it looks without the glasses

Again lifted from the internet, and the bottom shows on of the dragons, which felt like it was coming towards us

After all that, I was definitely ready for some lunch, so we went to a vegan restaurant in the direction of the Dotonbori. The food was good, and certainly filling. I had a vegan version of an Hawaiian Loco Moco (seemed fitting), which I had never heard of before but was really tasty, and Craig had a burger, which he said was very good too.

Filled to the brim, we set off for the Dotonbori and, in particular, the Sennichimae Doguyasuji Shopping Street which is lined with shops selling all sorts of kitchen, dining and drinking items, mainly targeted at restaurants, cafes and bars. If you love kitchenalia, you will love this place. We spent quite a while wandering the shops and found everything we wanted, so went away carrying our desired goodies (ok, soup bowls, pastry baking rounds and a silicon baking sheet), contented. Truth is, there was so much more I would have liked, if money wasn’t a consideration. Fabulous day, if a little tiring – we did quite a bit of walking.

The last two also from the internet

That’s all for now

Cheers!

Fly in/fly out guests

My toes…

There were gardens around the Sky Bldg, including some crops, with scarecrows!!

In an underpass the walls were all decorated – this was my favourite section

Well, funny you should ask…

(on the window, it said “ESSENTIALS” and underneath “Fear of God”!?)

Building decorations

What can I say? Weird? WTF? Who…? (…are they? …designed this?) Why?

Interesting bamboo decorations

Us waiting in the Emperor’s Palace grounds for Craig’s vaccine timeslot

Couldn’t resist another pig photo at this shrine

Me looking into the abyss

Most summer flowers are now gone

Hi all, and my apologies for being so late. We have had a few things on our plate recently and so I haven’t had enough time to sit down, edit the photos, gather my thoughts, write the text, then upload the post. This whole process usually takes at least a whole day, depending on the speed of our Wi-Fi connection.

Moving onto the narrative, firstly, it turns out that I was sadly rather too accurate in my predictions about the fifth wave here, with the daily numbers of The Virus sky rocketing around the country – Tokyo numbers are now above 5,000 per day (except for Sunday numbers, which are slightly lower), Osaka numbers are now above 2,000 per day, and the Kyoto numbers are between 400 – 500 per day, and most days are also ‘record highs’. This is thanks to the delta variant and poor management, and had very little to do with the Olympics being here, except maybe people having parties to watch the events.

Thankfully, the vaccine rollout is now back on track, with bookings re-commencing in Kyoto from 2 August. Both Craig and I have, as of Saturday, had our first jab, and we have appointments for the second dose in three weeks. This is very much a relief for us and, while I have a sore upper arm from the injection, it all went very smoothly. We both went to mass vaccination centres (in different places, as we just grabbed the earliest appointments we could get), and even though I had to wait for 30 minutes after the injection, having had a bad reaction to a flu vaccination once many years ago (this was my first vaccination since then), I was out within an hour.

In terms of the weather, most of this period has been hot, with the occasional rainy day – up until 11 August, that is. Since the 11^th, we have had a stationary cold/warm front sitting over most of Honshu. Yes, it has remained in position for over a week, and while there has been dragging rain across from China. Hence, we have had a lot of heavy rain, with one area having around 1.5metres of rain in a week! In the same time, Kyoto city had around 500ml, and I think we must have had more than that in our area, because one of the Japanese women we know sent a message to us last Sunday (15/8) asking us if we were ok.

The day before (Saturday 14/8) it was raining very heavily here, and we had five Level 4 emergency warnings during the day (Level 5 means evacuate, now), the first three of which consisted of the emergency bell sounds and a written warning (in Japanese, but we know basically what they mean), then the last two had the added fun of a voice telling us the whole warning. These warnings are sent to everyone who owns a smartphone registered in Japan, and somehow the warnings come out at full volume, even if your phone is turned down. You can hear the neighbours receiving them, if you open a window.

As is usual here, the warnings for our area were all about possible landslides and the evacuation centre for our area is fairly close to our home, so we haven’t been there as yet. If we lived closer to the hillside, this would be a different story. The heaviest rain recorded for Kyoto city was 42.5ml in one hour. I have to assume it was heavier where we are (which is in the foothills). On the Saturday the city had 127.5ml in the 24hr period. Interestingly, after all the heavy rain, we had two smallish earthquakes on Monday morning (one at 5am, which woke me up, and the next at 8am, both swayers and basically the same strength), which could’ve caused problems if they had been a bit stronger, given how much water was still in the soil.

How the river normally looks (top) and after some heavy rain – and this was on the Monday

The weekend before all the rain set in, we met up with two of our friends and some of their friends (seven of us in all), to celebrate Lilia’s birthday. She chose to meet up on the banks of the Kamo river, as she did last year, but with fewer people due to The Virus. It wasn’t quite as hot and humid as last year but there was lightning again, which I enjoyed (even without the thunder). It was again a united nations group, with representatives from Israel (the birthday girl and husband), Iran, Jamaica, Japan and Australia. We had fun and ate a lot of wonderful food (and also drank a reasonable amount of wine 😊).

The cloud which gave us the lightning display and a close visitor

Apart from our usual weekly supermarket trip, and a visit to Costco, which we visit at least once every two months, we have also had one major outing to visit a house with a large garden and museum, and we recently helped another foreign friend here move all her rescue cats to a new home. Tamarah is an American who lives with her partner here and lectures in ethics (mainly animal ethics to Veterinary students) at one of the universities in Osaka. Aside from this, she has taken it upon herself to help the street-cat population, mainly the colonies along the Kamo river nearby, by undertaking the ‘trap, neuter, release’ program.

If necessary, she keeps some of them, such as kittens in need and those cats who are unwell. She had been looking to find a new place to keep them, as she was only renting space up until now (a warehouse which has no air-conditioning), and finally found an old home in the suburb on the other side of the mountain range behind us which she could afford and then had it renovated to make it into an amazing cat sanctuary. We offered to help with the move, since we don’t have much in the way of cash to help support her, but we do have time since we have no guests.

So, we spent two days (during the time it was raining, but before it got really heavy), moving around twenty six cats and all the associated accoutrements, such as cages, cat trays, bowls, blankets, marble slabs (used for the cats to sleep on, to help keep them cooler), towels, toys, scratching posts, etc. We will be moving more cats up until the end of September, since part of the reason for this move is that she is going to try to trap all the remaining cats in the Kamo colonies so that she doesn’t have to go out every day to feed them, which she does late at night so as to avoid the mostly old men cat haters who have tried to hurt her, and the cats, many times.

As it happens, the rain was good cover to move the cats in, away from prying neighbours eyes…

For our major outing we decided to visit the old residence of a famous artist, who we found out about via Instagram. His name is Hashimoto Kansetsu (1883 – 1945), and he was the son of an artist, born in Kobe but mainly lived in Kyoto. The residence is named Hakusansonso (白沙村荘), but I couldn’t find out why he named it that. He believed that painting and creating gardens were the same, and in fact he designed the house and garden, and all the other buildings within his 1 hectare property. He also designed a gallery to display both his works and his collections, however, WWII put an end to that, and in the end the gallery wasn’t constructed until 2014.

Some of Kansetsu’s paintings

The garden is beautiful, with many different ‘zones’ connected by paths and gateways, and there are many old stone items he collected spread around the spaces. We had no idea exactly what to expect, except we knew it had been a home, but it definitely exceeded our expectations. We were lucky enough to be there in time to see the lotus pond in flower, too 😊. Unfortunately the gallery didn’t have as many of his works as I had hoped for, but it was still lovely to walk around. We were the only people viewing the garden and the gallery, which also made it seem more intimate, and the two staff members in the gallery were very attentive and helpful, with one speaking a little English.

Me crossing a bridge pointing out something important!

The Zonkoro – painting studio

Kansetsu and friends used to sit on this giant slab of stone to drink tea, or sake…

There are a few final things to mention before I finish up for this post:–

Apart from being high summer (and usually walking puddle time), July is also Gion Matsuri month, however, as with last year, the festival and parades were scaled back due to The Virus. In fact, the only evidence of the matsuri was the construction of a few of the smaller floats in a back street near the centre of the city, where they also had some of the usual matsuri items for sale. Here’s hoping that the full matsuri will go ahead next year!

While on our way to the vaccine centre that Craig had his shot at, we passed a shrine which was dedicated to wild boars. As I am a boar (I’m sure you all know that…), I decided to visit the shrine on our way back from the centre. Known as Goō Jinja, it was built to enshrine Wake no Kiyomaro (733–799), who was a trusted advisor to Emperor Kanmu and was committed to trying to keep politics and Buddhism separate. He was eventually sent into exile by a Buddhist monk who wanted to be the next emperor, through his influence with the Empress, but who Wake no Kiyomaro said couldn’t be an emperor. The monk had the sinews of Kiyomaro’s legs cut, and only the protection of a powerful clan saved him from being killed by the monk instead of his going into exile.

The next year a new Emperor came to the throne and sent the monk into exile and recalled Kiyomaro from exile, making him a governor. Interestingly, he was the person who convinced the emperor to make Heian-kyo the site of the new capital, now known as Kyoto. As to why the shrine is dedicated to boars, it is said that Kiyomaro was saved and protected by 300 wild boars until the end of his journey into exile. It’s an amazing shrine, with a huge collection of boars of all shapes and sizes, carved from wood, cast in metal and made of ceramic.

The last item for mention is a ‘Close Encounter of the Animal Kind’ – only one animal this time, though. I was mid-way through my ballet at home class, facing towards the backyard at my couch-barre, when I saw a Japanese weasel run across the open area behind the fence – or should I say bound. Unfortunately it was gone before I could reach a camera, but it was very beautiful, covered in bright orange brown fur.

That’s all for now – lets hope I have better news on The Virus front next time. At least both Craig and I will be fully vaccinated by then (well, unless we have to get a booster, but that is still being debated).

Cheers!

Our first comment when we saw this, rare to see a sheep in Japan…

More photos from Hakusasonso

It’s all about marketing!

Interesting design

 Halloween!!!!

Trying to take a selfie with friend, but there’s little room and then your friend hits you on the head…

Visited Toji temple the other day and found the lotus still in flower, and it appears Ghidorah may have found a new place to nest!!!

River turkey enjoying the extra water

Bee enjoying a lovely flower

What???

Ahhh, lying next to the fan in summer