Tell my wife I love her very much she knows

Here we are again nearly a month since the last post. You really are struggling with this weekly post business aren’t you. In any case, on with the big news - We’ve moved! Yes, settling in to our new apartment.

Moving

Yes indeed, after a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, should we move to Tokyo or not, we decided to stay in Nozomi’s home town. But we have moved out of the apartment built for her brother, in to an apartment her family built about 30 years ago to rent out. In fact, they even lived here when Nozomi was still a kid while their home was being rebuilt. Keeping it in the family but not free-loading. We paid rent for the old place and are paying for the new place. It’s a bit old, and gets a bit cold in the winter but I think I do like it more than the other place. This one feels like a proper Japanese apartment (becuase it is). The apartment they built for her brother, where he lived for a while before moving to Tokyo for work, feels like an odd mash-up of UK and Japan. He spent a few years in the UK and wanted a more Western style house. So there’s a rolltop bath - but no tiles on the wall/floor. So you can’t really have a proper shower. There isn’t a Japanese style porch at the entrance so people don’t know whether or not to take off their shoes. And the layout is a bit odd. And nothing to do with his tastes, but the family run a rental studio on the ground flooor and the flat is on the first floor. There are quite a few dance classes, and the speakers are attached to the ceiling - which is our floor. So it could get a bit noisy when the classes were on. But enough of the whingeing. The one thing I do miss from the old place is the view from the window. I could see the top of Mt Fuji, and a reasonably wide view of the sky which often put on some great colours around sunset. No such view at the new place.

Nozomi is still using the old apartment as her studio. It’s a bigger room, with better light and she can set up her computer and also paint there. I’ve set up my workspace in the new apartment in one of the rooms, which I suppose would be called the living room. Instead of a normal desk and chair though, I’ve gone for a floor-level setup. I’ve got myself a “kotatsu” which is a Japanese invention to get around not having heating. A traditional kotatsu would be with a sunken floor, with a heat source set up at the bottom and you have a low table with a blanket over it. So you sit on the floor with your legs in the sunken section where the heat is. The modern variation of this - for apartments where you can’t really have a sunken floor is a low table with the heat source on the underside of the table-top. So you stretch out your legs under the table and get the warmth from under the table top. Genius idea! It is a surprise that Japanese homes don’t have central heating considering it gets about as cold, if not colder, as the UK. Maybe homes further North have central heating but I don’t think so.

We did have a bit of drama moving to the new place. Drama might be too strong a word, but definitely a bit of a faff. Rental properties here do not come with any light fittings - you bring your lights and take them with you to the next place. Nozomi had picked out some lights she liked from Ikea and we ordered them. Went over, thinking this would be moving day only to discover that there were no light switches! The kitchen and bathroom lights had switches but the living room and bedroom did not! Turns out this is not uncommon in old houses but was a massive shock to me. I’ve never been in a world where there are lights but no switches. We managed to find a workaround for one of the lights - a pull-cord adapter that sits between the ceiling socket and the light socket. Kind of like a USB/lightning adapter i-people need to connect devices to their i-thingys. Not the greatest solution, especially given the crap design of the Ikea lamp. I don’t know why Ikea get touted as having great design. I’ve never really liked them and these lights haven’t helped. Had to cut off the plastic surround that is supposed to cover the socket becuase it would not stay in place. Anyway, that solution didn’t look like it would work too well for the living room so we had to go and get a new light that came with a remote control switch.

Not just the lights but we had to get a hob and a fridge as well. Most hobs here are not fitted either. You disconnect it and take it away with you. So even though we’re here for just a year we still had to go and get all of that. And of course had to sign up for a broadband contract as well. Faff sorted, we finally managed to move in to the new place. We’ll have to figure out what to do with this stuff when we leave.

Shochu

I had quite a nice whisky collection back in the UK, and am planning to go and visit a few distilleries while we’re her. I’ve already visited the Yamazaki distillery on a previous visit but would love to go and see the Nikka distillery in Hokkaido. There’s also a small one near Mt Fuji which might be cool. But while I’m here I decided to give shochu a try. It’s a Japanese spirit which can made from a few different things - there’s barley, sweet potato, buckwheat, and rice as the main ones. But then you get ones like the one I picked up recently where it’s a barley base with about 10% sesame. Shochu is a lower percentage than whisky, so you can have a bit more than a wee dram :-). I’ve finished one so far and am on my second!

Yugawara

In amongst all the faff with moving we did manage to do a few things. We were planning a day trip to a town not too far from here and Nozomi found out that they have a pottery studio where you can make your own tea/coffee cups. We thought sure why not! The instructor seemed nice but a bit grumpy. Maybe he didn’t like foreigners too I don’t know. But he was good and helpful. We were supposed to only make the teacup and coffee cup but we had a bit of time so he suggested we make some little plates as well. They have a bit of a wait at the kiln, so they’ll be fired, glazed, and then sent to us. Hoping they show up soon.

We didn’t go there just for the pottery of course. There’s a nice park, an onsen, and a foot bath place. Foot bath I hear you say? Yes the Japanese seem to have a fondness for footbaths. A lot of onsen towns have free ones - you just take off your shoes, roll/hitch up your trousers/skirt and sit there soaking your feet in hot water. I’m not mad keen on them but Nozomi enjoys them. This park had a paid footbath area where they had about 10 different baths with different temperatures and textures - smooth pebbles to put pressure on your feet, coarse sand, and such like. I’m still not converted to liking them though.

Hayakawa

The next weekend was a long weekend, with Monday being a public holiday. Apparently they have one every other month now, to encourage people to go out and spend money. Nozomi’s sister had the day off on Sunday and we were planning to go some place. But turns out the middle day of a long weekend is the busiest day in Japan. So after being stuck in traffic for ages we arrived at a port town called Hayakawa not too far from where we live. Nice little port town with lots of restaurants but very busy that day. We had to wait a while but did eventually get a table. On our walk around the seafront we saw lots of cats. One in particular was very striking.

Religion

Hah, I’d nearly forgotten! This is the trouble with not keeping up with a weekly blog. I think I’ve mentioned before that I go to a Japanese language class twice a week. The train to get there arrives about 15 minutes before the class starts so I generally wander around the town until its time. On this occassion I was idle browsing at a shop and a Japanese woman looked at me and asked if I was a tourist. Explained that I wasn’t, here for a class, blah blah. She says she’s studied English but doesn’t get to use it much, and that she could tell me about Japanese culture. Now I wasn’t too sure but I thought why the heck not. Meet up for a coffee, have a chat - I know of some people who do that sort of language exchange thing. So we exchanged contact details and eventually arranged to meet up.

We meet at the station and decide to go for a coffee. Over coffee she starts to talk about some religious scroll written by a monk some thousand years ago, and that it’s at a temple on Mt Fuji. But there is a copy of it in Odawara - the town where I have my lessons, and where we were at the time. OK, uh huh. Would I like to go and see the scroll? Um, sure, I suppose so. Now as we’re walking towards this place where the scroll is (about 15 minutes) she goes on about how following that monks way and saying a prayer transformed her life. Uh oh. This is not what I signed up for. So we go to the place, and turns out its a prayer service. She even goes and buys me prayer beads and offers me a book with all the words for the service. At the end of this, the lady running the day’s prayer service (not the woman who took me there) turns to _me_ and welcomes me to this sect/religion whatever it is! I don’t understand 99% of what she says and just sit there. On the way back to the station this woman spouts more stories of how people who follow this religion all survived the earthquake of 2011. How it transformed some kid who had a serious heart condition. Full on evangelist mode. F** me! Who knew there was such a thing as an evangelical Buddhist. Not me, that’s for sure. I suppose any religion will always have its evangelists, but for some reason I never expected to come across a Buddhist evangelist. Got back home, and the next day she sends me another message saying she’d like to meet up again. I wrote back, making it clear that I had no interest in religion. Comes back with a long message about maybe there was some misunderstanding and hoped that I still held her god in my heart and would chant a mantra for 5 minutes twice a day. Um, no I don’t think so.

Cherry blossoms

We’re very close to the mountains, and one of the nearby towns has a variety of cherry blossoms (Kawazu sakura) that bloom earlier than the usual ones. It’s not too far so we put on our walking boots and headed out to where the trees have been planted. I’ve got to be honest - I was expecting more of a trek like I’m used to in the UK but it was mostly walking along the road, with a final pedestrian section with steps leading up. Still, it was really nice and worth the walk. They even had nano hana (rape seed) planted around the same area, and the yellow and pink flowers made a nice contrast. On the way back the sun was starting to drop and we were treated to a nice sunset with a view of Mt Fuji as we returned along the river.

Skywalk

Mishima Skywalk is where we were planning to go a couple of weekends ago during the long weekend. It’s Japan’s longest suspension bridge or some such thing. Possibly the most over-hyped place in my opinion. Maybe we just went at the wrong time - it’s winter so there is not much foliage, and it was also not the most clear day. Mt Fuji was just about visible, but very washed out and pale. Seems very popular and there were busloads of people coming there. But there are far better places to go and see in Japan.

Hina matsuri

This is also the time of year for Hina Matsuri - Doll’s day. Families have dolls that are put out in a structured display. Each family has their own set - Nozomi and her sister had a set as well when they were younger. We saw a display at Matsuda when we went for the cherry blossoms and went to see another display in the town where we are staying (Kaisei). The collection at Kaisei was much bigger, on display in an old merchant’s house.

We did also make it in time to eat lunch at a very nice, if small, soba restaurant in Kaisei on our way to see the Hina matsuri. I’ve been there on a previous visit - it’s run by a couple out of what looks like a house. It might just be their house, with them living on the top floor, I’m not sure. Awesome soba!

Well, bit of a long post but that’s what happens when I don’t manage to keep up with my schedule.