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.