A European's move towards Japan
Just a quick heads up. A friend of mine from Tokyo came for a visit, and we roamed through Okazaki yesterday: Keage Incline, Murin-an, an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art…
It was definitely worth it, but I was pretty exhausted afterwards because of the heat. And I need to play catch up with work. So, just a wonderful picture from our dinner on Monday night – the harvest moon, only two days after it was full. Courtesy of my friend.
What a summer! It was mostly relaxing and stress-free, this my first summer in my new house. And it wasn’t quite as hot in my bedroom underneath the roof as I had feared. The temperatures stayed mostly in the low to mid 30s during the days and dropped just enough in the evening to make sleeping possible most nights. I’m not sure if this is because of the “cool mountain air” “up here” where I live now, or if summer was generally a little cooler this year.
Pumpkin did suffer from the heat too and visibly perked up the few times I used the air condition. He spent most of July and August inside the oshi-ire in my office, and during the nights he slept on the cooler wooden floors, trying to catch even the tiniest breeze coming through the house. Now he’s back on his zabuton cushion next to my futon at night, a sure sign that autumn is coming.
As was to be expected, summer wasn’t super busy, but a few things did happen, and I will write about some of them in more details in future posts. Here a few titbits:
I am getting older… I’m back at the physio therapy for my hip pain, which took a while but was relatively easy to do. And I now have glasses for reading, which was quick but more complicated to achieve. At first, the doctor gave me the wrong prescription; the second one isn’t 100% correct either. By now I think that the first prescription was correct, just had the left/right eye swapped…
Thanks to the new glasses, I can now read furigana again, which is absolutely necessary in my Japanese studies I have picked up again. I am planning to take the next JLPT in December, starting small at the lowest level.
I learnt other new skills that will help me keep the house in order in the future.
Thanks to those skills, one more room is finished/furnished.
And then, there is Project 50 x 50…
But more of all this at another time. Nice to be back!
Sorry for not writing for such a long time. I’ve had good intentions, but I need a break again. Things are busy, and I feel like I’m in a rut and sitting at the computer 24/7, even if I don’t. And with the summer heat that has finally hit Kyoto, it’s pretty difficult to work anyway.
So, I have decided to take a break from posting here over summer, probably even until the end of August. I have no plans of going anywhere – not that I have money to do so, and Pumpkin doesn’t like being left alone – but I may try a few fun things in Kyoto. So far, there are still very few tourists, and the locals enjoy themselves.
Speaking of local enjoyment, here are a few highlights of Kyoto’s Gion Matsuri 2022. This is the Saki Parade on July 17, I watched it with a friend of mine from Tokyo:
Tsuyu is the Japanese name for the rainy season in early summer. Some people call it even the fifth season in Japan. It’s a stretch of time when it rains almost every day, but not necessarily continually. During the tsuyu, both temperature and humidity rise steadily, and when the rain finally stops, summer has begun for real.
Last week, the head of the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) declared this year’s tsuyu to be over, after one of the shortest and not overly rainy periods in history. And Friday/Saturday promptly turned out very hot and sunny already – just to be followed by another cluster of heavily rainy days until yesterday. According to the forecast, we’ll now have two or three hot days again, followed by more rain in the weekend.
Well, is it now tsuyu or not? Maybe the JMA misspoke? In any case, as long as I can stay home, I don’t mind the rain very much. It cools down the house quite nicely. Unfortunately, the humidity is already here to stay this year…
… kind of. The beginning of last week was so cold, I put on a thick sweater again. And Pumpkin slept in my bed – under the covers – for two days straight. So far, we haven’t had really hot and sunny days, at least not several in a row. It was overcast quite often, even when it wasn’t raining.
But this week, summer is speeding up. It’s actually starting to get humid, and for the rest of the week, temperatures in the low 30s are forecast. We’ll see. I’m curious if and how I will be able to sleep. My roof seems to be not insulated at all, and although I leave the windows open now, it can still get quite hot upstairs in my bedroom. I wonder how bad it will get in August. And how Pumpkin will deal with the heat and humidity. For now, he has found an elevated spot on some moving boxes (yeah, I know… go on, judge me) and sleeps there during the day. In the night, I often find him in his kitty bed that I place at the head of my own futon.
One thing I find quite interesting is that the sunlight, just before sunset, is now reaching into my office, which is on the north side of the house. At the moment, it’s just for a few minutes every day, but the light gives a beautiful orange tint to my white rooms. I didn’t catch it today, but I’ll try to take a photo and share it with you here soon.
I’ve been busy again with all sorts of end-of-the-month stuff and other things.
Catching insects in my bedroom, for example, with the help of Pumpkin, who apparently doesn’t like to sleep in a bug-infested space either. (I’m glad he doesn’t).
Getting money to all sorts of tax offices and membership fees to a whole bunch of groups I got into at some point – and letting those know that I’ve moved while I’m at it.
Trying to finish work as much as possible, so I can do fun stuff next week – it’s Golden Week again! There are more sights near my new place than I had thought, so I hope I can explore them soon.
And, finally, getting my latest DIY project finished. Here’s a preview, more photos to come soon:
Goodness, where did the month go? Somehow I’m missing a whole week! Yesterday I noticed that it was the 20th already, when I had the feeling that the month had barely started…
Now I have to start thinking about end-of-month things for work and privately, and I feel I’m running out of time, even though some of the things that need doing don’t get done very long ahead of time anyway (shame on me).
In any case, I’ve been busy! The house is looking better by the day (I think I can post another finished/furnished next week) and just today, I was invited to a press preview of two museums, and tomorrow, there’s another one scheduled. These are the days when I love my job – even when it’s raining.
My new neighbourhood comes with brand-new responsibilities. And this month, I’m responsible for garbage duty.
As I surely mentioned before, Kyoto apartment buildings or private homes don’t use garbage bins. Instead, you must buy individual bags – yellow for burnable waste, transparent for recyclables – and put those out at the designated spots on the designated collection days.
In a neighbourhood like mine, each of 5 to 10 households brings their garbage bags to their own spot, and they all are responsible to keep the place clean. This means mostly preparing the net under which the bags should be stored before pickup (from morning to whenever the garbage truck arrives) and putting it away again afterwards. Unless the crows get to the garbage before the truck and rip the bags open to find delicacies, it’s not a big deal. Except that you have to do it almost daily: In our neighbourhood, different types of garbage are collected from Tuesday to Friday.
I expected to be on garbage duty eventually, since it rotates through all the households using a particular spot. Yet, I did not expect this lovely introduction kindly provided by my neighbour:
I also got a sign that says ゴミ当番 (garbage duty) and that I should display at my house; probably in case something goes wrong, so people know where to complain. In any case, it seems I’m becoming an integrated part of the neighbourhood faster than I had thought…
For now, all my work assignments have dried up completely, and I’m not expecting the next one until next week, Tuesday. So, I’ve been catching up on a few personal things I’ve wanted to do, at times for years already!
First of all, I went to see the current exhibitions in my two favourite museums, the Insho Domoto Museum and the Sannenzaka Museum. I love going to museums and learning about (Japanese) art – something I never thought I would like to do. I’m very surprised about myself here.
This year, I also scored a free ticket to the Ikenobo Ikebana Spring Exhibition. The Ikenobo is the oldest ikebana school in Japan, and it has its headquarters in Kyoto, at Rokkaku-do temple and an adjacent modern building. Altogether, there were more than 1000 flower arrangements on 8 floors! It was a bit overwhelming for me, at the end it got a bit much, and the arrangements started to blur into each other… There were surprisingly many people for a Monday, and many of them were deep in conversation about one piece or another. No wonder, ikebana was touted as one of the female graces in the Meiji and Taisho period. More about that at another time.
And then, a friend of mine invited me to a recital of Noh; it was a group of laymen, so there were no masks or costumes, but I found it just as amazing as the professional performances. I also splurged on tickets for a bunraku performance – Japanese-style puppet plays for adults. I thought I could understand what was going on, but the play, based on the Heike Monogatari, was very complex, and even reading the synopsis afterwards didn’t help at all. However, it was very interesting, and I’m planning on seeing another play – with proper preparation, next time.
Two weeks ago, I also had a house-warming party with some friends, and it was lovely, even though my kitchen is still not finished. This is also an official shout out to all my non-local friends who sent me gifts in the last few months: Thank you very much! Your selections of sweets, wine, and cat-related items were very well received. 😉
Now what? There’s still half a week to go, after all. The cherry trees at my shrine next door still need a day or two, but it’s hanami at other places in Kyoto already. So I want to go out a bit and enjoy the sunshine. There is also the kitchen begging for its wallpaper, and I’m out of preparations… Somehow, I am quite daunted by this, but I guess it’s just a question of rolling up my sleeves and getting it done. Also, I’ve spent much of this week writing for some personal projects of mine, and I want to get one or two of them completed. I guess you’ll hear more of those on this blog as well…
Today is cat day in Japan – February 22. This is because the way cats “speak” in Japanese: nyan–nyan and ni is the term for two. And this is why the Tamayuran, the best cat café in Kyoto, has had its grand open today after being shut down for almost a year.
This has nothing to do with COVID, though. The old building, and some neighbouring ones, were bought by an investor who will tear them down and build something new – probably one of these dreadful one-room apartment buildings on 5 floors or so. This is because the old location was quite close to Kyoto University, and students need a place to live somewhere, after all.
Akie, the owner of the Tamayuran, needed quite a long time to find a new place for her cat café, and once she did, the renovations took ages and tons of money. The new place is in a quiet neighbourhood with somewhat more through-traffic, but the house is also much smaller. It is nicely renovated though and just a few finishing touches are needed – more cat pictures.
Cat pictures only, sadly, because there is not enough space anymore to put in the cages with the rescue cats. Akie plans to have maybe one or two cats roaming the café, but since the house leads directly onto the street, nothing is certain for now.
I hope I can visit her again soon, even though it’s a bit out of the way for me now. However, her cakes and sweets are legendary, and there’s always reason to have something sweet…
And if you dare, you can go sit down in the new basement – which is not quite as spooky as in this picture, but the staircase is very steep and narrow and the ceiling very low. If you’re claustrophobic, go down there at your own risk!