Category: experiences

Sorry for going AWOL for a month. I was very busy during Gion Matsuri with lots of appointments. Now the festival is over, I’m busy catching up with all the things I didn’t have time for in July. And we’re in the middle of a heatwave to boot, so things are going slower than usual as well.

Even Pumpkin, who is an elderly gentleman and doesn’t move with much vigor in general, takes it super easy these days. He’s now trying to find the coolest spots in the house to sleep in. Sometimes that’s under my desk. Sometimes that’s in my office’s oshiire. And sometimes it’s … I have no idea where. He does come when I call for him, though. Sometimes.

In other news, my new residence card has arrived past the due date for renewal and telling banks and other official places that yes, I am indeed legally here again, please don’t shut me down, took less time than I had feared. Now that I’ve been through the process once, I’ve learned a few things that will help me keep my cool in case there are more delays in the future.

I will try to keep posting here in summer regardless of all the things I need to do – including staying cool. Just in case I can’t, don’t worry, I’m just busy with all kinds of stuff – I’ll keep you posted when I have something to show for it.

Summer has arrived in Kyoto, and it’s been blistering hot the last few days, a few showers here and there notwithstanding. From now until the end of next week at least, we’re looking at 37 degrees with bright sunshine every day. Thankfully, the nights are cool enough, so sleeping is still possible. However, the heat itself is exhausting, even Pumpkin, who now spends his days hidden deep in my office cabinet, looks more sleepy than usual. And the kids next door who usually pitch baseballs back and forth for hours every day are not venturing outside right now either.

Although I’d like to do the same, I do have to go out regularly, to work, to go shopping for me and Pumpkin or to simply escape to my favourite library. While I try to avoid the heat of the early afternoon, it’s not always possible, and to my chagrin, I have made a rather painful discovery: My nice 10 mm hairstyle, cool(ing) as it is, does not provide much scalp protection…

As a remedy, I have two options: Go full-scale Japanese lady and use an umbrella. Or buy a sun hat. Since I’m very much a hands-free kinda girl and umbrellas are really cumbersome on a bicycle, I decided on a sun hat.

Interestingly, finding one was surprisingly challenging: First, I need one small enough so I can wear it on the bicycle without losing it, but still big enough to provide some protection for my neck. And second, I seem to have a surprisingly small head (I’m talking circumference, never mind my ego) compared to the average Asian. And it’s true: I have old photos where my small face stands out among all the Koreans around me. I wonder if that’s me or if that’s a general thing…

Anyway, after some looking around, I found a good sun hat of the right size and proportions. Believe it or not, this is my very first such purchase after living in Asia for 16 years! And the best part of it: I got it for just 300 yen in a second hand shop. So, from now on, I’ll be wearing a sun hat on my trips to the grocery store and the library. Give it a bit more time still, and I’ll blend in perfectly with the locals!

This afternoon, I took a break and went to see a woodblock print exhibition with my friends. One of them exhibited her latest prints, and we were very surprised that they were so much more colorful than usual.

It was a special event because the teacher (whom I’ve also known for many years) was there to comment on some of the prints. Because it was quite technical, I didn’t understand much of it, except a comment about perspective.

Anyway, we sat and chatted afterwards for a while to make it a nice afternoon.

Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of BATI-HOLIC: after the free concert on May 18 mentioned earlier, there was another one last Friday. Not only did they play for 60 minutes, which is rare outside a solo concert, but they also presented a brand new song with lots of sing-along potential! I hope they’ll play it again next time on June 11. In other words: three concerts within less than a month (and another one on the horizon at the end of June)

This recent surge in my BATI-HOLIC fangirling prompted a friend of mine to ask, “But, isn’t it boring?”

On the one hand, I get where she’s coming from: They only have two CDs out, with a handful of additional songs, and they do play current favourites, both the band’s and the audience’s. So yes, on the surface, it does get a bit repetitive.

On the other hand, BATI-HOLIC only play two or three solo shows every year (the next one is in July.) Except for that, they share the stage with other bands, sometimes only one, sometimes as many as five or six if they play at a festival somewhere.

That means: Whenever I go to a BATI-HOLIC concert, I am automatically introduced to new bands and artists. This gives me the opportunity to learn about Kansai’s indie music scene, even though not all of them fit my taste. And besides the music, I’m getting to know new people, which is also a good thing and one of the reasons I started going to concerts to begin with.

So, no: not boring at all. Sorry to disappoint.

As I said before my holiday, I spent a lot of time setting everything up for a week off, and I was quite busy on Sunday (27) until midnight or so to experience bliss offline. So much for my plans.

Reality hit me on Monday (28) with a cold that knocked me flat out for a couple of days and turned into a sinus infection by Thursday. “Holiday” indeed, and I’m still coughing. At least I didn’t have to worry about going online and coming up with daily social media posts. And those eight books I had prepared were handy too.

Other plans had to abandoned, even though I didn’t have to spend all week in bed. (Not that Pumpkin would’ve minded that.) I only completed 8 out of the 20 projects I wanted to tackle; these were mainly small-scale home improvements that didn’t take much time.

By this week I felt good enough again to go out again, so I dropped by my neighborhood shrine for their main festival. Interestingly, that’s the first time I’ve seen it, which means I’ll give you a full account this Sunday, if I don’t get sick again.

Which is unlikely, because now I have to get back to work and my body knows it can’t let me down in times like these.

For once, Easter isn’t just passing by unnoticed, so: Happy Easter!

Other than Christmas, which has been thoroughly commercialized, Easter is not much of a thing in Japan. I guess that’s because it tends to fall somewhere between hanami and Golden Week, when the Japanese are busy with their own traditions. Also, there are only very few shops – mostly those that sell foreign goods – where you can get Easter-related merch like chocolate eggs or decorations.

Personally, I’m not very big on holiday decorations, so I tend to skip these occasions completely. However, a friend of mine gave me the above painting, so I put it on display as a nod towards Easter.

It’s a little female rabbit bowing politely at a tea ceremony. I hope the calligraphy says something appropriate… I’m still struggling with the kanji, and handwritten Japanese will probably remain elusive forever.

I’ve told you often enough that I don’t like winter here because it is so cold in the house. Another reason I don’t like winter much is that I can’t sleep properly. That has nothing to do with the cold bedroom, though. The problem is Pumpkin and the fact that my little furball is cold too.

As I mentioned before, I have a heavy woollen duvet in my bed plus a fleece blanket on top. Together they keep me wonderfully warm even when the room temperature drops down to 5 degrees or below. On such cold nights, Pumpkin insists on sleeping with me underneath the duvet, and because it’s so heavy, he needs me to lift it up for him a little so he can get inside. Our bedtime routine is such that he’s waiting until I turn off the light before gently scratching the pillow next to my head so I can let him in.

So far, so good. The problem is that while I need eight hours of beauty sleep, Pumpkin certainly doesn’t. He slips out of the bed several times at night to eat and drink, to go potty… And then he wants to get back underneath the covers. When I’m asleep, I don’t react to gentle scratches – so he meows instead. Straight into my ear. Loudly. In other words, he wakes me up several times a night because he’s cold. So far, so bad.

I’ve tried this year to teach him to sleep between the duvet and the fleece blanket. The latter is much lighter, so he can get underneath it without my help. He was not very happy about this for a while – it is not quite as warm as curling up next to my body. But finally, I can report that yes, he got it.

The last few mornings I found him curled up underneath the fleece blanket only, and blissful nights of uninterrupted sleep these were! He now even wants me to tuck him in when he takes his afternoon nap in my bed. It’s those little wins. I just hope he remembers this until next winter…

Things have got really expensive here during the last year. Obviously, a large part of this is because the yen is so weak, so all the prices for imports have skyrocketed (except tourists, they come for free it seems…) But also local products have increased in price, in particular: rice.

Compared to normal Japanese people, I eat comparatively little rice, a large bag lasts me several months. Therefore, I tended to watch the sales and usually bought my rice at around 1,980 yen for five kilos of Akitakomachi rice from Akita prefecture. This very same rice at the very same supermarket now goes for 4,090 yen (without sales) for five kilos. I’m quite shocked.

The reason is inflation and high prices all around, but also because there was a quite bad harvest last year because of dry weather; typhoon-related floods also diminished the harvest in other areas of Japan. On top of all that, there was an “advisory” by the JMA (Japan Meteorological Agency) last August about the increased risk of a megaquake along the Nankai Trough, that stretches from central to southwestern Japan in the Pacific Ocean. Note that they also mentioned something about “in the next 100 years”, which didn’t prevent people from stockpiling rice immediately.

In response to the price hike, the Japanese Government has decided to sell about 10% of their rice reserve of 1,000,000 tons to keep prices stable. So far, I haven’t seen much movement in prices; the cheapest 5 kilos at the cheapest supermarket are 3,180 yen right now. I’m wondering if any of that cheap rice will make it to Kyoto or even any of the rural areas at all. I’ll keep you posted.