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I have seen that in several European media there has been coverage about the typhoon that was passing over Japan during the last few days. There were indeed serious disasters along the path of the typhoon, especially in the south-eastern parts of Japan, in Okinawa and in Kyushu, with even seven victims.

However, it seems that Kyoto lies in a favoured part of the country; at least this time we could not feel any effects of the typhoon at all. The storm – or rather, its offshoots – was supposed to hit Kyoto yesterday, today at the latest, but – nothing. Not even rain, just a bit more wind than usual at this time of the year. The only thing noticeable – and I’m not even sure it was related to the typhoon at all – was a clearing of the clouds from Tuesday on, and this brought sunshine and increased humidity. A friend told me that yesterday evening – at a time when I was busy with my soroban class, so I missed it – there was an evening sky so blue it was almost unreal.

By now, however, we are back to grey skies… So, don’t worry about me, everything is back to normal, actually, it has hardly deviated from normal at all.

One of the main reasons for applying for a library card was that I wanted to read Japanese books. I am a very visual person, my preferred approach to learning is by making lists, writing down all the grammar points from the books again, and reading – lots of reading. For me, this is also a way to make learning vocabulary more fun; although I have to admit that by now I don’t look up every single word I come across – as long as I get the gist of the text, and the unknown word does not keep reappearing (in which case I assume that it is important and I look it up after all).

So, I went to the library and borrowed a children’s book in Japanese. The pros are obvious: Easy language and words comprising short sentences, all written in hiragana – and even with spaces between the words! And there are often many cute illustrations to help understanding. If you go that way though, the cons are obvious too: Children’s stories are not meant to teach vocabulary – the kids know what the words mean; so the beginning student of Japanese may find herself with a huge list of vocabulary that may not be immediately useful beyond the book – vocabulary for animals or household things,… For example, how often do you use the word “vase” in your daily life? Hence, a lot of the reading consists of looking up words, which can prove rather tedious. Also, the hiragana sometimes causes more problems than it should. When looking up words, it can happen that you get a very long list of possible translations – and not all can be dismissed immediately. Sometimes it would be much easier just to have the kanji there, to make it easier to find the right meaning – and, of course, to study them as well while reading.

Oh well, I remember I started reading English just like this, albeit with the benefit of a shared alphabet. I hope I will graduate to books for older children soon – which should have some kanji with furigana. And probably more interesting stories too…

When I went downstairs about two hours ago, I met on the bottom of the stairs one of our charming house pets – a large spider – obviously on the way upstairs… After a disgusted and somewhat panicked shriek of mine, it changed direction and tried to hide, but I did not move until my housemate (the one who actually likes spiders) came down the stairs behind me and asked what was going on. While I explained, another housemate (who does not like spiders that much) came along too and the three of us, with the guys in front of course, chased the spider into a corner in the corridor leading to the back of the house. We then discussed the further plan of action and we were divided between leaving it be, killing it, and putting it outside (that was my suggestion, actually). Finally, the last two people in the house appeared also, probably alerted by all the noise I was making, the walls here are indeed very thin.

After some more words, all three men disappeared on oh so urgent business; and it was me and our latest arrival, a British woman, who were left in charge. I was stunned when she simply said Let’s just put it outside, went to the kitchen to get a Tupperware box, caught the spider (about half the size of the one pictured) and released it at the bottom of the steps outside the house – all within five minutes. To my question whether she was not afraid, she simply answered I grew up in the Caribbean, we have tarantulas there…

So, once again, it was shown that if you want something done, ask a woman (if you can find one that does not have arachnophobia, that is). The big spider pictured above still lives in the house by the way, but it has been smart enough not to show itself recently. If it ever does so again, I’ll know whom to scream for…

About two weeks ago, I decided to get a library card for Kyoto city library. There are many branches around town, and I thought it would be a good idea to be able to lend books, as I love to read, and buying them can get very expensive soon (given the amount of books I tend to read…) So far, I was thinking of English books, of course, and maybe something easy in Japanese for children, with many pictures; but eventually I thought, I would graduate to novels for teens and adults. The Japanese love to read, there are bookstores all over the place, and even in trains there are equally many people staring into a book as staring onto a smartphone…

I have been to Japanese libraries before, in Nagoya and Hiroshima, so my expectations were quite high. Well, it turns out that the quality of Kyoto libraries is rather…underwhelming. It seems – I have seen four so far, so I may be wrong – that not a single one of the libraries has their own building, they are all stashed somewhere in some remote floor of a place that is mainly used for something else. The first library I went to was on top of a daycare facility, so they had mostly children’s (picture) books, which is okay, as I cannot read much more just yet. Another one was similar, and when I asked for English books in a third library, they showed me a tiny shelf with maybe 50 books in English, and barely a third was for adults.

They did send me to the “Chuo Daigo Library”, and told me it was the biggest one in Kyoto, and had the largest selection of English books, so I spent the afternoon there. Daigo is a part of town that I have never been to before, it did not make a very good impression on me to be honest, it looks like all the other busy Japanese towns; there are apartment buildings and a noisy, busy main road. The library is situated on the fourth floor of Daigo subway station, and indeed, it was the largest one I have been to so far. Their English section – still tiny – comprises two large shelves, bottom to top, and they have many English translations of Japanese authors – something I have hoped for. Unfortunately, they have a borrowing period of only two weeks (renewal is possible, but they ask for a single one only), so I only took a single book with me. I did make a list of a number of other books I’d like to read, and it should be possible to lend them at a branch that is closer to my place than Daigo – it took me about an hour to get there by subway.

All in all, I am not happy with Kyoto libraries as they are now. My soroban teacher confirmed that Kyoto’s libraries were not very good, compared to other libraries in Japan, even those in smaller towns around Kyoto. He says it may have to do with the fact that there are so many universities in Kyoto that have their own libraries, which are open to the public (although you cannot borrow books from them unless you are a student or working at that university). I hope that, once I figured out the lending system, I can lend books from libraries outside of Kyoto. It must be possible to get my fix here without spending tons of money, right?