I’m back!

Happy New Year again! Probably, by now we’ve all settled back into our workday routines. I sure have…

It was a very nice and relaxing holiday. I even tried to stay offline for a good part of it – so in case you haven’t heard back from me regarding any year’s end/start wishes, that’s the reason why. I was fairly busy doing things around the house, small projects that I had wanted to do for a long time, but that always fell by the wayside. Things like “clean the bicycle” and “tidy living room downstairs” and “clear office cable spaghetti”. From my list of 21 items, I did 12 completely and started 2 more only in the last 2 weeks. I’m pretty satisfied.

The biggest project was certainly to fix the shoji in my bedroom, and while this is a relatively easy thing to do, I ran out of paper on the last frame and needed to shop for more. But it’s done finally, and it’s amazing how clean the room looks now, even though nothing has changed but the colour of the shoji paper. I will talk about how to fix shoji in a separate post.

For the first time since living in Japan, I bought an ofuda, a lucky charm for the house, see the photo. It is supposed to go onto the kamidama, a special, slightly elevated place for the gods. Older houses have one in the kitchen, but my house doesn’t have one. No big deal, there are other places. The reason why the photo looks a bit washed out is because the ofuda is covered with thin paper, and I have been told to leave the paper on, probably so it doesn’t get dirty in the year it should stay in the house.

Other than that, the weather has been quite pleasant, especially compared to last year. Of course, Pumpkin is freezing anyway and sleeps under an extra blanket on a heating mat in my office… And there were a few colder days, but overall, it’s much warmer than it was last year. We’ve only had one day of – very little – snow so far and even though it is objectively cold, subjectively, it doesn’t “bite” that much. Let’s hope it stays that way!

2 thoughts on “I’m back!”

  1. I am glad you aren’t suffering too much in the cold, but I would still die. My room is apparently around 23 degrees, but I still use a blanket when I am sitting and reading (or watching youtube *cough* I am not very good at not being online XD)

    Do the paper charms for the house get burned at the shrine like the Darumas or what happens to them after the year of “absorbing” evil?

    1. “Heattech underwear” And my dyson hot&cool aimed directly at my legs. 😉
      With socks on, sleeping is not a problem. I bought a very heavy 100% wool duvet a couple of years back and I’m super toasty in there. Even Pumpkin likes it (and helps to warm me up, too).

      As for the ofuda, I’m not sure what happens to them. I know I should bring them back to the shrine when I buy a new one, so I guess they will be burned. Every shrine has at least one official fire ceremony, maybe those old charms fill the gaps between the ema tablets and goma sticks?

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