Time for another business update! As you now know, this year the What’s up in Kyoto monthly highlights will be in-depth articles about shrines in Kyoto. One reason for this choice was that I thoughts shrines would be more friendly to requests than temples, essentially because they have less money. And when I got the quick and friendly answer from Yasaka shrine for January, I was very happy and felt on a good track.
But now… I had planned another one of the bigger shrines in Kyoto for the February highlight, because they have a very interesting Kigen-sai ceremony celebrating the founding of Japan as a nation. We have actually approached them back in December already, at about the same time as Yasaka Jinja, but we received only an evasive reply. So we tried again this month, now with a link to the new highlight so they have a better picture what I’m up to. Again: no reply other than “our PR representative is not here at the moment, but he’ll call you back.” Which of course, didn’t happen at all.
So, at this point I have decided to try another shrine for the February highlight, which means we’ll have to start all over again, researching and writing the article, scoring pictures, making phone calls and sending faxes… This time we spoke to the PR representative in person on the phone, but no reaction to the fax we sent yesterday.
I hope the nice reaction of Yasaka shrine is not an exception. If yes, then… what the hell did I get myself into?