The 2016 Mizumoto Undokai

Well, I figured if I am going to resume blogging it might as well be with the biggest sporting event of the year. Yes, it was the 2016 Mizumoto Elementary School's sports day. An occasion that puts the Olympics, the Euro Championships, Ireland's tour of South Africa, and the GAA Championship in the collective shade (though the beating Tipp handed out to Cork in the football had us sitting up and taking note).
And what a sporting spectacular we had. Matched in its athletic grandiosity only by the blue skied magnificence of the weather. Which lasted until Saturday evening. Since Sunday we have had constant torrential rain everyday, all day. Cian and myself have taken to going to school/work in the morning in our surfing wetsuits.
But I digress.
Things kicked off with the usual bloodcurling calls to battle from the hoarse throated leaders of the Red and White teams. Which were met with clenched fist power salutes reminiscent of Tommie and John at the 1968 Olympics.

 

Then we had the 80m sprint.
Yes, that screaming streak of black and amber on the outside is indeed Cian in a Kilkenny jersey.

Silver. The gold was won by that poor lad who was clearly off his brown-eyed head on a potent cocktail of methamphetamines, cocaine, angel dust,  anabolic steroids, EPO, and curry powder. Though to be honest if you look at the size of him he could have used a spoonful or two of growth hormones in the cocktail too.
Mind you this shameful display of rampant drug abuse was roundly ignored by the assembled VIPs. One of whom, in the photo below, is the school principal. Can you guess which one?



Next, was the tug of war. Last year the Red team had suffered two straight losses to the White team and as Cian summed it up, Red team were collectively "Mad as hell and not going to take it anymore"!
Suitably enraged, they made it two tugs in a row (?) and left the White team face down in the dust.



Then it was Mammy's turn. As a sort of light relief from the otherwise unremitting tension of the epic battle between Red and White, the school PTA organize a parent's tug of war. Sanae decided to participate and lined up with the only other hobbit present at the Undokai.
Unsurprisingly they lost.
Both the tug of war and their dignity.





Then it was time for lunch, under a tent as the sun had reached its zenith and the temperature had climbed into the mid twenties. Plus, the relay, the day's premier event, was yet to come and we didn't want Cian suffering from heat stroke before hand.



After lunch there was a burst of frenetic dancing to ensure that all the food was digested.



There were a couple of other events involving plastic tape and running aimlessly around but the heat and food had got the better of me by that stage and I kind of drifted off into a prolonged daydream about Galway beating Mayo in the Football Championship.
Just a daydream, though. Sigh.



Finally we came to the relay, the gold standard of modern day athletics. The victors would be walking tall for a year, basking in the glory, a burnished cloud of awed respect following them around wherever the went.
And the losers? Well, over there in the shadowy, cobwebbed corner they'll find the dustbin of history...





I would like to write that it was an unbearably close race that went all the way down the long final straight to the finish line, but in truth by the end of the second leg it was all over as a contest. The Red Team, in their collective gazelle like brilliance, quickly took an insurmountable lead and literally ran away with it as a contest. Indeed, before they even got to their anchor some people had begun packing up and making their way to the exits to beat the traffic.
So, yes the Red Team took home the prize for the first time in three (long) years but you've probably read all about it in the sport's pages.

お玉杓子

 
otamajakushi is the Japanese word for ‘tadpoles’. Yes, it is spring and that means the Gaynor-Takahashi zoo must be replenished with its yearly quota of small, aquatic creatures. Dogs and cats are out as (a) we have no garden to speak of so we can’t leave them outside; (b) all three of us are out of the house from 7:30 to 18:00, so leaving an animal that can poo and pee at will in the house is a non-starter; and (c) in winter it is so cold outside that you would have to keep the animal inside day and night which brings us back to (b). We did consider getting something small and furry like a hamster but there is always the danger that Sanae might get fed up looking after it, ‘inadvertently’ deep fry it and serve it to us for dinner. So we stick with the fish and tadpoles, augmenting this in summer with various stag beetles, noisy crickets, and if we’re lucky, the occasional short-lived firefly.
So yesterday we went to get the tadpoles. It was a nice, brisk sunny day and being the eco-responsible-Subaru-driving-Patagonia-clothed family we aspire to be, myself and Cian cycled up and into the forest.



All of which was made a tad more strenuous that it should have been by Cian’s refusal to raise his saddle. He claimed that all his friends have their saddles low. I pointed out that all his friends are smaller than him and need to have their saddles low or their feet wouldn’t touch the ground. You, Cian, I argued, have the opposite problem: your saddle is so low your knees are almost banging into your chin. Still, he wouldn’t listen to solid Irish reason, but kept the saddle low, looking like Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider.

Cian and Peter Fonda go for a ride.

We found the tadpoles, or rather tadpole eggs as most of them haven’t hatched yet, duly scooped up some and brought them home. Turns out we brought more than just ‘some’ home. When the silt had settled in the glass tank and we could see things clearly, we had a lot of eggs in there. A lot. Mammy wasn’t happy, visions of hoards of frogs overrunning (over-leaping?) the house at the end of June. We promised that we’d let them loose before then, probably into the garden of the old decker who lives across the road from us.

Mitsubishi - the Japanese Volkswagen

You may have got echoes of this over the ether these past few days, but Mitsubishi motors has followed Volkswagen in revealing that it too had, gasp, falsified its emission figures for its cars.
And not to be out done by the Germans, the company admitted today that it had been at it for nigh on quarter of a century. Yep, since 1991, the mileage figures touted by Mitsubishi for all those millions of sold Pajeros, Shoguns, Lancers, Outlanders, etc. were as believable as the Easter Bunny.
In fact, the company had been manipulating the numbers for so long that they went from being 'falsified' to 'accepted company practice'. This, according to the Japan Times, is how the President of Mitsubishi Motors (pictured above) explained the remarkable longevity of the company's malfeasance:
“We are not sure if they were even aware that it was the wrong method. When it started, they might have thought it was correct, and that thought was then passed down, so it is possible that they did it without questioning why”.
This is a classic Japanese answer to a typical Japanese problem - 'the tyranny of tradition' as I like to call it. We've always done it like this so why should we change it, even if the method is shamelessly wrong/illegal.
Or rather, mind-blowingly, expensively illegal. For the four most recent car models affected (sold domestically since 2012), the financial damage to the company is estimated to top 100 billion yen. And the accountants can't get their heads around the last 25 years and the millions of cars sold worldwide because, like, man, those, numbers, are like, just, like, cosmically freaking big, man.
I'm glad to be driving a Mazda, but we are thinking about (gasp!) changing cars to something a tad bigger and right now, if you think about it, there may be no better time to buy a ... Mitsubishi.

Sankanbi

Well, that went surprisingly ... well. On a lovely, sunny Saturday morning I strolled up to Cian's school around 8:30 and found myself the first parent there.
Such is the enthusiasm of the foreign parent.
Cian's teacher, no doubt impressed with my enthusiasm, beckoned me inside the classroom rather than have me mooching around in the corridor, scaring all the other parents away. Plus the kids in his class kept coming up to the door window and making faces at me. As I was happily making faces back at them, the teacher probably thought it was best if I was in the class where she could control all of us.
Cian was sitting in the back right corner of the classroom so I decided to stand behind him so that (a) I could observe his behaviour during the lesson; and (b) subsequently apologize to his teacher for his behaviour during the lesson. Cian usually ends up sitting somewhere along the back row of the classroom. This is due to the fact that as he is so big students sitting behind him can't actually see the blackboard. He is also too big for his chair and his desk. By 6th class he will be lucky to get through the classroom door without banging his head off the top of the frame.
The lesson was about what the students are planning to achieve in the coming academic year. In groups of four and five, the students came to the front of the class and read out a summary of what their aims are as 4th year students. These were broken up into:
gakushuu: educational or academic aims
seikatsu: school life
kokoro: personal development
For gakushuu a lot of the students opted for learning to read and write more kanji, or doing better at Maths. Cian hoped to do both. Nothing from nobody about learning English. So nul points from the hairy foreign parent about that aim.
Seikatsu was dominated by a burning desire to win at this year's sport's day. Cian's class had been humiliated by the other fourth year class in last year's games. In the intervening twelve months, revenge had curdled into a bile so bitter they were spitting it out as they announced their intention to annihilate their neighbors in the next classroom. It was almost North Korean in its hysterically baroque intensity.
Kokoro was all about helping the new first year students, those innocent little tykes who still didn't know how to get to the gym and were convinced that the toilets were haunted. No mention of who had convinced them the toilets were haunted, but I could spot a few of the usual suspects from where I was standing.
At the end of the school year the students will be held to account as to how close (or far) they came to achieving these aims. In fact it will be included as part of their report card, along with their progress in maths, Japanese, science, etc.
After the class it was off to the gym for the PTA meeting.
I was only foreigner there.
And more surprisingly, one of the few men there. If you ever want a quick indication of how progressive a school is, check the gender ratio at its PTA meeting. Unfortunately, the parents at Cian's school were solidly in the conservative education-is-the-mother's-responsibility camp, with us new age men types conspicuous by our presence. Daddy's work, or, as this was a Saturday morning, go off to baseball practice or whatever, but they sure as oestrogen-filled hell don't turn up for no emasculating PTA meeting!
Goddamn!
Which is unfortunate, as the PTA meeting was quite informative and provided a sort of behind the curtains peek at the priorities set by the school and the parents. For Cian's school this meant expanding the school library, safety patrols in the morning and afternoon when the students are coming and going from school, and hiring teaching assistants for maths classes.
By contrast, in Sanae's old school (she was transferred at the beginning of this month - more anon), the priority was keeping the kids out of the local borstal and confirming which parent had custody of the kids after the latest round of divorces.
I, thankfully, wasn't chosen for anything - yet. It is still early in the year and I may well have to 'volunteer' for events as they arise.

The new school year

The new school year started for Cian this week. Hard to believe but he's now in 4th class. Where did the time go? And what was I doing when it went?
As usual after his first day Cian arrived home with small forest's worth of paperwork: timetables, school lunch menus, explanations, forms to be filled. Among the highlights were:
1: His year long schedule, from now until March 31st, 2017, with all the events of the year from school days to holidays, sports day parents' days, etc. already decided and dated. Most impressive is the fact that Cian will attend school for a total of 208 days this coming academic year. That's nearly over three weeks longer than the slacker páistí back home who can only manage 183 days. For shame. No wonder the country is such a mess.
2: His daily timetable. Every day school starts at 8:20 (though Cian is usually there by 7:45 in the morning such is the boy's enthusiasm for educating himself. Actually, that's not true. He goes that early so he can play dodge ball in the gym before classes start). On Mondays and Tuesdays he has five classes which means he's finished around 2:15pm. On the other days he has 6 ("feckin!") classes which means he doesn't finish in school until close on 3:30. Then its over to Daddy's office in the university for some world class English language education ("for fecks sake!").
3: Entreaties and/or veiled threats to 'volunteer' to join the Parent Teacher Association. The PTA is akin to the Teamsters in the US in the 1970's: seemingly friendly enough and concerned with the betterment of the school and students, but God have more mercy on your doomed, bloody soul should you ever cross them. In Japan the PTA isn't just a forum for blowhard parents to sound off on whatever minor inconvenience irks there little Satoshi. Rather, it is integral to the smooth functioning of the non-academic aspects of the school, particularly sports day, the graduation ceremony, after-school clubs, and eh, flower planting in spring. However, their zeal can be a bit full on and many parents, like myself and Sanae, who work full time, are loathe to give up what little free time we have, particularly on the weekends. This seems to be a bit of a trend as in the new school year letter/threat from the PTA, they stated quite forcefully that all parents are expected to volunteer for at least a minimum of 2 years while their children attend the school.
The first PTA meeting of the year is on this Saturday morning and in a very canny move, Sanae has decided to dispatch me to see how they react to having a big hairy foreigner in their midst. She has also warned me that I can't let on that I understand Japanese. Not something I should find particularly hard to do. I will let you know how I get on in the next post.
4: The map. Yes, a map. Every year we have to submit a hand drawn map to the school showing the route Cian takes from our house in his epic 800m journey to the school. As neither we nor the school have moved since he started you would think the cartographic powers that be would be content with the map we submitted in his first year, but no. Every year requires a newly drawn map just to confirm that (a) Cian still knows where he is going; and (b) that in the intervening 12 months no new topographical features like a sudden mountain range have popped up along the 800 metre route. I was highly tempted to submit a copy of a map from Middle Earth showing Cian traversing the Misty Mountains before cutting south through Mirkwood, and heading across Dagorlad before arriving at Mordor (or Mizumoto Elementary School to give it its official title). But Sanae didn't think that was funny.
She is a hobbit after all, so she probably took it a bit personally.

Skian Cian

Last Saturday we finally got ourselves off to Rutsutsu to enjoy some of that fluffy powder snow that part of Hokkaido is covered in. It was a beautiful day with barely a whisper of wind and a warming sun beaming down on us all day.
Cian (and Sanae) had spent the previous month attending ski lessons at the local ski field in Muroran which was kind of good in that in the space of a week he jumped from level 4 to level 2. The lessons were also kind of bad in that they were also, well, lessons and so inherently boring.
So today the boy got to be who he wanted to be on the slopes - we got to see Cian free styling it, a sort of modern Miles Davis of the powder.
There are two videos. You can see the first one
here
This is a kind of a promotional film for the splendor and beauty of skiing amidst volcanoes and, eh, trees. He likes to ski between them, around them, and on occasion, into them.
The second video is
here
This is, well, frankly, thrilling. It is akin to the prelude at the start of a James Bond movie where 007, after stealing another incredibly important something or other, flees from the baddies' alpine redoubt down some gravity defying slopes towards what seems certain death. Or at least for Daddy who had to film whilst going down the gravity defying slopes without any ski poles.

Snow

Yesterday was a good day. The sun shone, the wind whispered, the temperature murmured around the zero mark. So we took ourselves off to Muroran mountain to enjoy the good weather. Cian and Sanae went skiing. Last week Cian successfully passed Grade 3 of his Junior Ski test. We figured he'd take the Grade 2 test next year, but the boy wasn't having any of it. He took the test yesterday and passed it, first time of asking. Hell, not did he only pass it after a morning's worth of instruction, but he set the fastest time for the test course. Suitably emboldened he wants to try Grade 1 next week, but the ski school is finished for the season and there are no more tests are being offered.
Or so they say.
I reckon they are embarrassed by the mockery Cian has made of their grading system and want to figure out how to fail the boy without incurring the wrath of his big, hairy, foreign father. It's early days yet but Ireland could have their first downhill Olympic hopeful. Though as it is Sanae who goes skiing with Cian I may have a bit of a battle on my hands to get the boy to declare for Ireland. Mammy has taken to the slopes in a big way (and no, that is not a subtle reference to her, ahem, 'girth'). She too is taking lessons, passing exams, and hanging out with old people on the slopes.
Meanwhile Daddy was off reenacting the Revenant (though without the mound of skulls). After climbing the mountain I decided to hike down through the forest and follow the valley back to where we live. I did this because (a) it was a nice day; (b) it would beat trudging down the busy road from the ski field; and (c) I was a naive and innocent fool who didn't know what I was letting myself in for. I figured it would take be about an hour and a half.
Four hours later, most of it spent breaking trail through waist high snow, I arrived home, dehydrated and delirious. Well, okay, not quite that bad. But I was hungry, and dying for a cup of tea. And looking nothing like Leonardo DiCaprio.
Still, like I wrote above, a good day.







Today, however, was not a good day.
It started at 5:40 with a flurry of phone calls from Sanae's school informing her it was closed because of the weather and she was to stay at home until further notice. Similar phone calls for Cian. No contact whatsoever for me. The university gets their pound of teaching flesh no matter what the weather.
It was hard to credit how, in a mere 12 hours, the weather had deteriorated so quickly. We looked out our bedroom window and saw this.



So we went upstairs where the view didn't get any better. And it was fecking heavy, wet snow, that took two sweaty hours to clear. And then off to work for me while the rest of the Gaynor-Takahashi family lounged around drinking hot chocolate and wondering what movie to watch.

The walk home

Every afternoon Cian comes to my office around 4:15pm. We do an hour or so of English study (mainly reading and writing. He is already pretty fluent in Irish swearing). And then we walk home.
If I am walking home on my own, it takes around 12 minutes to get back. I know this because I timed myself. That's what you start doing if you live long enough in Japan.
Walking home with Cian however, that 12 minutes gets stretched out to 30 as we, or rather the boy, 'perambulates' in a meandering fashion towards our house.
Now, I can understand why he does this. Cian likes to be outside but the cruel tyranny that is school keeps him inside for the best part of the day. So when he does finally get to venture beyond the classroom walls, he naturally wants to make the most of it.
Which is fine, absolutely fine.
From April through to November.
In winter, it is not so fine.
Today the mercury in Muroran climbed no higher than minus two. There was a bitter north west wind blowing and any exposed skin was rendered raw. Cian was born in the Hokkaido heartland in winter so this sort of freezing cold weather doesn't even register with him.
His father, however, was born far from this Japanesed offshoot of Siberia and as I age, I find the cold gets deeper into my bones. By the time we got home this evening, after our usual 30 minute perambulation, I was skirting dangerously close to hypothermia.
(Funnily enough, the one time I did actually turn hypothermic was in summer in Ireland. It was August 1997, I had just come back from six months working at a scuba diving school in Thailand, and I went for a dive off Fastnet Island. My body, used to the 28 degree plus water of the Gulf of Thailand, was not ready for the relatively chilly 16 degree Atlantic Ocean. After 30 minutes underwater my body was shaking so violently I was vibrating rather than swimming through the sea. When I surfaced I didn't have the strength to climb into the boat. It took three of the crew to lift me on board. Then they had to wrap me in whatever towels they could find and fill me full of hot tea until my shaking subsided. All the other divers described the dive as "excellent" and thought we had been blessed with the weather. I have never gone diving around Ireland since).

Sanada Maru

As I write this Cian is watching his (current) favorite television program, "Sanada maru", a historical drama which, according to the official NHK homepage (which you can see, in English, here), is "a story of the love and survival of the Sanada Family, a middle class family in the Warring States period" (approximately 1350 - 1650). This period, as its name suggests, was pretty 'het up' as they say down in Clare, with the Samurai families from differing provinces going at each other like the teams  a Munster Hurling Final.
Now all of the above I gleaned from the NHK site and Wikipedia. Watching the program itself has left me completely baffled. There is a lot of fighting, intrigue, more fighting, a smattering of romance, some more fighting, an extravagant display of a variety of goatees, yet more fighting, and a lot of shouted dialogue. To be honest, I am not sure if Cian quite grasps the nuances of plot but he does like the fighting. Following each episode he runs around the house with his wooden sword wreaking loud vengeance on various phantom samurai. From his prolonged battles, it would seem our house is overrun with them. The boy can't wait for puberty when he can grow a decent 'sparrow' goatee.
Watching (bewildered) the program has made be wonder about Cian's sense of identity and who and what he thinks he is. Through school and television he is immersed in Japanese history. Irish history is, unfortunately, limited to GAAGo and reminiscences about when I was in primary school (the 1970s. Man, was it ever happening back then). There is little I can do to alter that. I suspect Cian would find Irish history akin to my impression of Japanese history - confusing and somewhat irrelevant. For both of us the past is indeed a foreign country.

Japan's negative interest rates

On Tuesday last the Japanese central bank instituted a policy of negative interest rates, in effect charging commercial banks to park their money with the Bank of Japan. One of the immediate repercussions of this move was that the commercial banks cut their already paltry interest rates for individual savers. The rate now stands at 0.001%.
Yes, 0.001%.
What this means in practice is that if you deposit 1,000 euro (I know, I know it should be yen, but using Euros highlights the effect better), after one year, you will receive exactly one cent of interest.
Yes, that's 1,000.01 twelve months later.

The move smacks of desperation. The Japanese government urgently needs to kick start some form of inflation, any form of inflation, in order to counter the frightening amount of public debt the country has amassed. For a number of years now the Bank of Japan have set an inflationary target of 2% and for the same number of years they have persistently missed this target. Even with massive public spending and the Bank of Japan buying gazillions of government bonds.
The root cause though isn't economic, its demographic. An aging, shrinking population means a shrinking work force, which means less consumer spending, which means less demand for Honda cars and Sony TVs, which means less workers are needed, which leads to a shrinking work force, and, well, you can see where this is going. The obvious solution is immigration but that is something the current Japanese government won't even contemplate, let alone discuss.
Meanwhile, I'm thankful I still have my AIB savings account which is giving me a staggering (by Japanese standards) 0.25% annual return.

Kyoto

And what better way to commence (albeit very belatedly) 2016 with a photographic tour of Kyoto. I have been in Japan for nearly 18 years ("No!"), and last weekend I finally got around to visiting Kyoto.
For all of a day and a half.
I was there to attend a rip-roaring, rollicking, rollercoaster ride of a presentation by the Ministry of Education on the introduction of English as a full academic subject in Japanese elementary schools from 2020. This took a whole day as there was a lot to talk about and to be honest I'm not sure if everyone was listening.
Cian and Sanae came with me but they didn't go to no presentations, governmental or otherwise. They went sightseeing and I caught up with them on the Saturday.
Kyoto, for those who don't know, is the old capital of Japan, a position it held until usurped by the mercantile appeal of Tokyo. It is still regarded at the country's repository of culture and tradition, of all that makes Japan truly Japanese.
In many respects it is akin to Kilkenny (but without the people of Kyoto referring to themselves as 'de Cats'). Nor does it have much of a tradition of comedy festivals. Nor has Bruce Springsteen ever played live there. But in all other respects, the two cities are the same.
There is a lot of history attached to the place and Sanae tried to explain it all to me, in Japanese, but once she found out that I though 'Heian' referred to a Chinese washing machine manufacturer (as opposed to one of the pivotal eras in Japanese history), she kind of gave up on me.
So what follows are photos, lots of them, and a sort of potted, I-really-should-have-read-the-guidebook-properly, explanation of what's what, where's where, and who's who.

We will begin with Fushimi Inari Temple, probably Kyoto's most popular destination, or it certainly seemed that way with. To appease the gods the local agricultural co-op provide vegetables at the main shrine.

What Fushimi Inari is most famous for though are the series of tori or traditional gates that go from the main shrine to the top of the small mountain around which the temple complex is built. We were there early on a Saturday morning in February so atmospheric photos were possible, but in high season (which, we discovered, basically meant any day of the year after 9:00am), the crowds obscure pretty much everything.

We climbed all the way to the top of the 233m, ahem, mountain with fair bit of huffing and puffing. The higher you went the more atmospheric it felt, though not quite enough to 'reach out and touch the glory'. (And no, that's not a turtle they are slowly roasting above the candles).

You could also buy your own tori if you were so inclined, with prices to suit everyone (depending on the size of the tori. The small ones in the center of the photo above would cost you ¥175,000, while a full size replica will set you back ¥1,302,000. And they don't take credit cards.

 And there were bamboo groves! Hokkaido is too cold for bamboo but I am trying to convince Sanae to let me attempt growing them inside the house. Once the trunks get too tall I promised her I would either cut them off, or punch a hole in the roof. She didn't seem convinced. 

There was also the shrine to the frog, who looked happy to be there. The frog god behind him (I'm presuming), doesn't look all that impressed. Though at least he's got that concrete Toblerone to keep him happy.

By the time we got back down the mountain, the crowds had arrived. The narrow lane down to the train station was reminiscent of the Jones Road on All-Ireland Sunday.

 
 From there we moved on to Gion where, early in the evening we came across a pair of demure maiko heading to work. I admit I did feel guilty about taking their photograph as basically clicking camera shutters follow their every step and I reckon they must be pretty tired of it by now. Maiko are trainee Geisha. I have no idea what is involved in becoming a Geisha but being immune to camera toting barbaric foreigners I'm sure is an essential qualification.

We visited a traditional Kyoto house and garden. The dais on the right is where you sit and contemplate the ineffable evanescence of life.  And the unfortunate ubiquity of Irish tourists with cameras.

 Cian and Sanae duly did contemplate, while the Irish tourist did duly photograph.

It was chilly in Kyoto. Not as cold as Hokkaido, but damp and cold which we were not used to. The chill got into your bones and made you long for a cup of ... green tea. So off to a rather nice tea house we went.

Cian wasn't all that impressed with the tea but did like the sticky paste traditional Japanese dessert.

This is the dining and entertainment area of Gion early in the evening.

It's worthwhile clicking on the photo below just to read what is written on the sign on the left. Oh, but to be able to live that life.

Cian took this. It's a part of a continuing series. Cian calls this 'Step into eternity - Number 47. Limited edition'.

On our stroll we also happened across a traditional Japanese wedding taking place in one of the city's main temples (which, Sanae reckoned, cost more than our combined annual salary). And the Irish tourist was beside himself with snap-happy excitement.

Early on the Sunday morning, before catching our flight back to Hokkaido we took ourselves off to see Ginkakuji, the Silver Pavilion. Below is the sand garden, with Cian walking in the background (bucket and spade carefully concealed).

 And this is the Silver Pavilion, or to give it its official name, Jisho-ji, 'Temple of Shining Mercy'. I tell you, we could do with some of that mercy in Tenjin-cho.

This is the entrance to Honen-in, without doubt the most atmospheric place we visited and probably the temple that came closet to infusing us with a sense of the 'serene'.

This is the Philosopher's Walk, a riverside path that winds its way along the hills of the Higashiyama area of eastern Kyoto. On a chilly, grey morning in February it does have a touch of the Wittgenstein  about it, but those bare branched cherry trees literally attract thousands here when they bloom in early April.

To Nanzen-ji, which was from the 'F*** You!' school of temple design. Everything is on a grand scale, purposefully designed to showcase the then owner's power and glory. 

This is the entrance gate. Modest, eh?

And then it was on the bus to Itami airport in Osaka (which can be seen in the background) and veneration before the Gods of aviation.

 As you can imagine, in a day and a half we barely scratched the venerable lacquered surface of the city, but all the more reason to go back.