Halloween and the start of November

The 31st was, as usual, my favourite day of the year, Halloween! I dressed up as a cowgirl complete with paper guns and holster, and met roamed down Kyamachi looking for Halloween action with Hiroki and Mikael, and we ended up Happily at a club called Hati Hati, which is more of a cafe that hosts events now and then, the music was awesome and we danced heaps and it was interesting being in Japan, complete with people in costume sleeping in the corners...very Japan! I am still sometimes surprised by the locations chosen and deepness of peoples sleep in public....but now I sleep on the trains too. It seems like the most natural thing to do.

Halloween also included special Halloween activities at all my schools, and a great Halloween party at my friend Erics place, which is a spectacular ancient Japanese home/modern art home (including bear, rikshaw, and red boot on the roof). We had a very cool halloween gathering around the hearth and a feast and it was truly one of the coolest nights I have had in Japan.

Other than that it was work as usual, which means goign to teach classes at a private school in Kamishinjo on Monday evening, then a private class at a coffee shop in Katsura on Tuesday before working at the bar from 8-12, then going to teach the seniors group in Otsu on Wednesday afternoon, then going to Marks English school in Western Kyoto for the rest of the day and a long bike ride home in the evening, with private classes over the weekend, including a very cute pharmacists group, and the manager of the pig and whistle, and a lovely english teacher from Otsu on the weekend as well. After that I bike around and find beautiful new temples and shrines and art all over by happy accident, something new each time I go out.

The next highlight was visiting Uji. I visited the lovely couple I met on Daigoji mountain and it was incredible! They picked me up at the station with their daughter, who is great and speaks good english and was the main go between for the evening, and her two daughters. We all went to Byodoin, which is the temple on the 10Y japanese coin. The sun was setting and it was incredible, 1000 years old! It is famous for the phoenixes on the eves (now replicas of the 900 year old ones safely housed in the adjoining very cool museum) and a big buddha looking through a round hole in lattice work at the world, with a big moat around the wide temple. People were in awe, with so much reverence for this place as they looked at the artifacts and 25 (28?) floating buddhas playing instruments that float around the walls.

We took our time, it was nice, I tend to set such an intense pace for myself that I get exhausted, so going slow was a treat.

Unfortunately at that point my camera batteries ran out and I was so disapointed! I only have one photo of us together in front of the temple. It was so nice to be with a loving family for a day, their kindness was immesurable. Next they brought me to a 120 year old tea house with scarlet benches in the green planted forecourt with bamboo...so striking. We sat on the floor and ate traditional Japanese desert, very healthy, agar with adzuki beans and fruit, whose natural sweetness perfectly balanced the bitterness of real green powdered tea, or Matcha.

After this we strolled over Uji bridge and the little island in the center of town, before going to their beautiful home for a hot pot dinner, where you boil fresh beef and vegetables in a hotpot on a burner in the center of the table and dip the food in soy sauce for flavour before eating it. Delicious! And homemade fried chiken and vegetables...green tea...mochi deserts...and even homemade Umeshu (plumwine). It was strong! I only had two half glasses and I was tipsy. I looked through the family photos of vacations around Africa and NewZealand, amazing, and there was even a homemade zen garden! Very traditional beautiful home with all low to the floor and tatami and sliding screen doors....

After dinner we all posed for photos and me and the girls put flowers in our hair. They even printed out the photos so I could take some home with me ! Those are now my prized souvenirs of Japan. Oh yeah, and my handmade chopsticks of course!

Thank you for such a lovely time in Uji! I was so touched, and so moved, and I hope that I can repay your kindess some day!

Later in the week I visited Osaka again...but unfortunately lost my memory disk with my photos of office workers in matching black and white uniforms having luch symmetrically on a fountain edge with highrises majestically and uniformilly framing them, but I have a picture of the castle....the moat was surprisingly beautiful to walk around in. And there is even a "citizens park" nearby where people squat in big elaborate tarp houses freely, while the black and white office workers walk around the outskirts with sandwiches at lunch. Most interesting and I definitely reccomend spending an afternoon walking around the castle on a lunch break to see all this.

Such contrast in the sterility and consumerism of Osaka to the ancient refined almost snobbish elegance of Kyoto. yet I like modern Japan too as time progresses, its crazy!

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