Letter to Marlis Jun-Jul 2026

 Bellbird Park 10 August 2026

 

Hi Marlis,

 Only 4 weeks until it’s another birthday for you and the past 2 months have flown by, so your birthday will be here very quickly. I hope it will have warmed up a bit by then! I can already see it get lighter every morning, and the temperatures are slowly climbing up in the morning. Spring is on its way 😊.

For someone who isn’t working, I’ve had a pretty eventful 2 months, keeping busy as always. Here are my adventures of the past few months.

 

Work

I had a few things going on, but nothing too serious or involved. There’s still the Sydney consulting job for just a few days, but they still have to get back to e after 4 weeks and I’ve checked up twice, so I’ll leave it with them. Then there was the bigger piece of work for the Vetpartners organisation, but they decided to postpone until September, which I understand, but it also means no work for me. There were a few half-promises and opportunities that all just didn’t happen as is often the case.

To be fair, I’ve only really been looking, and not very hard, for the past 4-6 weeks. I have enjoyed being off and free to do what I want, but I am starting to miss work, so need to get on it a bit more. I keep finding excuses to not have to join the job hunt because it is a special kind of soul crushing. The whole process is just terrible, often automated, full of spam and scams and overworked recruiters just trying to reach a quota. I get it all, but would rather not get involved.

You’d think that someone with a network across the world, who is so involved in the community would have an easier time of it. I guess people admire me, but they won’t hire me, haha. Last week I joined a consultancy in a pitch (sales conversation) for an 18-month project at Queensland Rail and was impressed with how much they had already done. I wouldn’t mind taking the lead on that. I think we did okay in the meeting, but it’s anyone’s guess in these sorts of things, so we’ll know more this Wednesday. There was a lot of preparation work to be done and I always enjoy that, they will even pay me for the day it took to get all that done, which is a nice bonus and normally doesn’t happen.

If that one falls through, I’ll get serious about work, because I am almost at the end of what I want to do at home. And I’m running out of excuses…

Yumi’s work and dancing

Yumi celebrated 2 years at the Queensland Mental Health Alliance 2 weeks ago, wow time has really flown by on that one! It’s so great to hear her talk about her work and the things she’s achieving for the community, she’s definitely found the right role for her. Her team love her and they have so much fun together while also doing good work, sometimes I wonder if I am in the wrong line of work. They keep getting more work and people and new opportunities keep showing up, which is a real testament to the quality of the work they do to educate people, create jobs and develop the workforce in many other ways in this sector.

She’s started the 4^th year of Common People Dance Project and I am already looking forward to that show, it will be crazier and more over the top than ever. It’s just good fun to see the costumer and routines and how much joy they get from being on stage. The Burlesque dancing is also still happening, with another show just done last Saturday and she practiced really hard for this one, even including a few Sunday afternoons to get it all done. It will never be my thing, but I am still very proud of her doing all this and it’s a great way to make friends and stay active for her.

Rural Fire Service

It’s been very dry in our area lately, without any really good rain for the past six weeks or more. We have a dryness indicator we want to be between 30-70 at the most. It’s now above 100 and going up to 140, where things really only need  a spark to burn fast, so we’re on high alert.

So far it hasn’t been too busy with fires, which is exactly what we like, but there’s a lot of preventative controlled burning so you can see big smoke columns above the hills most days. They are trying to get things done before the weather gets even dryer and then the fire bans come in, and we all wait for bad things to happen. We had a big tree on fire, a few small grassfires and also assisted a neighbouring brigade with  a massive log pile burn that was 2 years of collected material lined up over 100 meters or so. They make beautiful ember tornados, but of course we want to make sure those embers don’t ignite anything, so we were out in force with 20 firefighters and stood around for 3 hours keeping warm with nothing happening, which is good!

I have now completed my Firefighter Advanced Skills training and get a second bar on my epaulette. That’s as far as it will go for me, because the next level up means you will have to lead a crew and I have zero interest in that. I want to drive the truck, put the wet stuff on the hot stuff and keep things safe, no need to be in charge of anything.

There are many other things I can still learn about and all the extra training I got was very interesting, especially the fire science of reading the landscape, understanding burn patterns and doing some investigative work on how fires originate, that was very cool!

There’s a lot going on at the brigade in leadership, with our First Officer stepping down and his dad also not putting his hand up for election at this year’s General Meeting where we elect our new operational and administrative leaders. It happens on 22 August, and we’ve been discussing what needs to change for a while, not so much campaigning, but discussing. I want a female leader for the next 2 years and fortunately we have Christy, who is very accomplished and willing to stand for election, she will almost certainly get voted in. This made me put my hand up for the role of Chair of the management committee, which is just looking after admin and supporting the operational leaders to deliver on promises.

Of course, I have many plans and ideas for change, mostly around the volunteer experience, succession and development, but this isn’t hard for me and will benefit the brigade a lot. We’ll see if I get elected, considering six people have asked me to stand for it, I like my chances. But even if that doesn’t happen, someone else will do it and while we’ll have lots of experience from long-serving members, we’re also getting some fresh blood, which is exactly what we need!

 4 years in Brisbane

On 18 August it will have been 4 years since we moved from Altona to Brissie and I can’t quite believe how much has happened since. I’ve worked in 5 different places, bought 2 new cars, wrote another book, met so many new people, helped create a stronger change community, started Karate, joined the fire service, bought a house, mowed 3,000km2 of grass, made new friends and now I wear shorts most days of the week when I am not working, even when it’s 2 degrees outside. I am becoming quite the Queenslander!

Yumi came a bit later, remember how I lived in student accommodation for six weeks, but for her it’s been an even bigger shift. Wrapped up her business, started a new role, got very involved with Love a Greyhound, joined two dancing groups and she now has a social life busier than she ever thought she’d have or want, but she’s loving it.

And 3 September is Dash’s 4-year anniversary with us, what they call his Gotcha Day. I so vividly remember the trip up from Melbourne to Springfield Lakes in the truck, driving behind Yumi and seeing him look out the window the whole trip and getting used to living with humans. He’s getting a bit older now at 8.5 years, but doing well and staying active.

Yumi and I often comment to each other that if this much happens in just 4 years, what might happen in the next 4?! Well, you’ll keep reading about it in these letters every few months!

 

Wombat the Greyhound

Very good news for Wombat, he got adopted! After 10 weeks with us and slowing down quite a bit, he’s now living the good life on Russell Island (just 6km from mainland Brisbane) chasing the waves and whatever catches his eye. Oh my goodness what a handful he was, but also absolutely adorable and lovely. Dash is probably the happiest of all of us that he’s gone, he is such an only child, haha.  Wombat now has a family of four kids to keep him entertained and the dad sends us pictures where Wombat looks right at home. We’re very happy for him, and for us, because he was absolutely full on!

One week before he got adopted, we got into a fight with another dog. It a Friday afternoon around 4.30pm and such a nice day I thought I’d take the boys for a slightly longer walk. We are walking along a street I’ve been a hundred time, minding our own business and all of a sudden, a dog (I think it’s called a Cavoodle) which was much smaller than 2 greyhounds shot under a closing garage door straight at Wombat barking and growling. It was off leash and I was not fast enough to pull back Wombat or Dash, so Wombat immediately grabbed it on the shoulder and wouldn’t let go. He wasn’t trying to hurt or kill it, I think, but of course the smaller dog had by then realised that this was not the smartest plan it ever had. Don’t worry, it was fine, but not before total chaos followed.

Here I am, on the ground, wrangling Wombat to let go of the dog, my fingers in his mouth, trying to pry his jaws open, him clamping down, the dog screaming. By then the mum and 2 small kids had run out of the house and start screaming and crying and very ineffectively slapping and kicking Wombat, but mostly hitting me. Wonderful! Finally, I get Wombat to let go and the dog stumbles away, only for Dash to come out of nowhere and tackle the dog to the ground again and grab it by the throat. I yelled NO!! at the top of my voice, which scared him so much he let go and then the dog finally got away. The whole family fled inside and they and I got assistance from 5 ladies from the neighbourhood who came to see what was happening.

The only one injured was me. Skinned my left elbow and knee pretty bad, so there was quite some blood, but more painfully, I had hurt (possibly broken) a few ribs at karate two weeks ago and not only did I get kicked by the mum, at some point I think she or the kids stood on me, trying to hit Wombat. I was sore all over the next day, but so relieved the dog was fine (stupid but fine) and that neither Wombat or Dash had bit the kids or mum. One of the neighbours saw it all happen and confirmed there was nothing I could have done, they should have secured their dog, but still, very glad it ended this way. Pfff, never again, I hope!

Love a Greyhound events

It’s been a busy time with the greyhounds too. It’s still mostly Yumi’s volunteering, but I do help out a bit more now. We did two events in a park, where people would gather to draw and the greyhounds would model. Easy enough when it was Dash and Wombat, but the next time I had to go and pick up two dogs first, take them there, stand around for a few hours and chat (not the hard part) and then drive back again to deliver them back to their foster homes, hoping that they’ve made good impression on someone looking to adopt. It’s also a good opportunity for people looking to adopt to come and see the hounds in person, so definitely worth my time!

Then there’s the two-weekly greyhound walk that we’ve been going to for years and last time we had a record 23 dogs! It’s so great to see it grow and have all the dogs say hello and their humans become friends over time too. Some people started out with none or one dog and now have two or even three, which certainly makes the group bigger every few months.

Just this weekend we helped out at what was easily the biggest event they had organised ever. In the Brisbane Botanical Gardens there were 10 stalls, the Love A Greyhound tent, a fashion show with greyhound models which was hilarious, music , kids’ activities and of course dozens and dozens of greyhounds. It was all the work of Yumi’s volunteer colleague Sharni who did an amazing job pulling all this together. When I agreed to help out a few months ago, I thought it would be fairly small and just  few hours work. We ended up leaving the house at 9am and were back at 6pm, but again, time well spent!

Visiting dietitian

You’ve heard me talk about my struggles with weight loss and dieting for as long as we’ve been friends. While it’s not been easy or fun for the past 12 years, I mostly manage to stay around 90kgs, sometimes a bit more, sometimes a bit less. But that’s only half the story.

Food noise, which is a term to describe continuously thinking about food at home and at the shops, is the real issue. It can be very distracting, annoying and frustrating. I though that with all my dieting knowledge and experience, I should be able to figure this weight thing out, but I finally concluded I needed some help.

So, I booked in with a dietitian 4 weeks ago and spoke to her for about an hour to explain my history. She agreed with most of what I said and had done, but told me to stop dieting and increase my protein intake for the next four weeks. I need about 90-110 grams and was probably only getting 50-60 on a good day. I had cut out so many calories, which is good, but had also cut out the protein, which kept me in a perpetual state of hunger. No wonder I was quite literally, always hungry. My body was telling me, but I misunderstood it for food noise.

Two days after essentially doubling my protein intake, the food noise is gone. It’s just not there. It’s so quiet. It’s hard to explain or describe, but it feels wonderful. I don’t want to eat, I don’t have to eat, I don’t think about food and when I am in the shops, I can walk past all the snacks and not feel like putting them in my cart. It’s amazing how fast it worked. I was worried about putting on weight, but I didn’t gain or lose anything, stayed about the same 91kgs as the past 4 weeks.

She agrees that I can stand to lose 10 kilos, which will be the conversation for tomorrow, but for now I am getting used to eating different things and working on like protein powder shakes. They don’t taste great or terrible, a bit gritty, but it’s such an easy meal and keeps my body entertained for hours. Now I have to remember to keep eating, which is such a change from waiting for the next meal I could eat. It’s quite the experience to find out this is how other people have been living their whole lives!

 

Last will and testament

We’ve finally started getting serious about sorting our last will and testament and there’s a lot to consider. We realised that we’ve gathered quite some assets over time and with our life insurance and everything paying out if we happen to die at the same time (flying, diving, driving, etc.) Dash would be a very wealthy dog 😊. He would probably spend it all on kibble and treats, so we decided to get a new will and testament, which means we also have to think about things like Advanced Health Directives, Power of Attorney, who gets what and what to do with all our stuff.

We’re now working with a lawyer who specialises in this sort of thing and it’s kind of fun figuring it out. We’ll set up a trust, called the Blue Sea and Sky Trust, named after what we used to tell people when they asked us “Why Australia” after we moved here. The trust will look after Dash and his needs in great comfort  if we happen to leave this earth tomorrow and the rest will go to family and charity.

The Advanced Health Directive asks some pretty big questions and it’s a 14 page document, but it’s good to think about what you want to happen when you can’t make your own decisions anymore. Yumi and I are very similar, we want the plug to be pulled if there’s no chance to live a meaningful and worthwhile life, so best have that written down before we end up being kept alive for years as a vegetable in some hospital, no thanks! We’ll have our ashes tipped into the ocean off the coast, together with the remains of all the pets we’ve ever had, returning us to the circle of life in a sense 😊. Weird to think about when you’re 47, but probably smart to have it sorted early.

 

Many small things and life events

·      After 3.5 years, I’ve stepped down from the Change Management committee. No drama or strive, I felt I had done everything at least twice and the organisation was getting a bit conservative, so I stopped at a high and maybe check in again in a few years.

·      We’ve started making holiday plans to go diving in Indonesia in October or maybe November, Dash will stay home to guard the house

·      My parents are going on what I think is their 5^th holiday this year with the caravan, they are loving it and I think it’s great they get to travel as much as they want.

·      While out litter picking, I found a brand new working laptop computer and managed to get it back to its owner. It was stolen with her car, not sure how the story ended but she at least has her work device back.

·      I passed my green belt Karate exam last Monday. That’s the third exam, so I am slowly making progress, still a few years and 6 belt to go until I get to black, but after 15 months I am not a total beginner anymore.

·      I stupidly fell off my bike at a very low speed taking a corner I had taken many times, but managed to hurt my ankle quite badly. I am fine now, but with the karate injuries and the dog fight and my general clumsiness I have 12 injuries or so and I am feeling it!

·      I did my taxes as a grown up and had to pay a lot less than I had put aside, so that’s a big win.

·      One more week and then we’ll host the 7^th edition of the Australasian Change Days. Ticket sales have been a bit slow, but we have a good line-up and it’s a good time to spend the day.

·      All the plants in the yard are growing and doing well. The Arabian lilac is a bit dramatic, drooping as if it’s about to die if I don’t water it every week and the grass is dry because there’s no rain, but ours is still the best lawn in the neighbourhood 😊

·      I’m really enjoying listening to a podcast by Alan Alda, who you might know from the tv-series M.A.S.H. He’s 90 and still working, so who knows Marlis, you might start your own podcast soon too, haha.

·      I bundled all the book reviews I ever wrote, and it turns out there are more than 120! I remember maybe half of them, but it’s cool to have it all in one place.

Okay, I think that’s most of it. I hope you’re keeping well and that we’ll see each other for your birthday. If you are feeling up to it, I would love to come and visit to spend some time with you.

I’ll call you closer to the date to see how you are feeling. If you’re not up for it and it’s all too much, that’s fine too 😊

 

Be well and stay warm until Spring arrives,

Gilbert

Letter to Marlis Apr-May 2026

 

Kyoto/Bellbird Park 14-16 June 2026

 

Hi Marlis,

I can’t believe it’s Winter already again, but we can’t really complain with the weather here in Queensland. I do hope you’re keeping warm and comfy until the sun comes out during the day.

It’s been a few strange but good months where I’ve been so busy that I hardly had time to do paid work, but got a lot done in other areas, so here we go with the adventures from the past two months.

Project Never Ending Garden

Stage one, which was laying down new turf and the fencing, happened last year and after leaving it alone for about 9 months and finding out what worked and didn’t, we had a good idea of what to do next. Welcome to stage 2, laying down 5 tonnes of pebbles. By hand, because I didn’t want to ruin the lawn with a wheelbarrow.

First, I removed a 10cm deep strip of grass and soil around the house where all the grass had died or refused to grow, ordered the pebbles, laid down 50+ meters of weed matting and when the pebbles got delivered, I set to load them into my two trusty 20 litre Bunnings buckets. I started on Monday at 7am and got nearly 80% done before I got heat stressed, but the next morning was much cooler and with another 2 hours I had it all done and done, including some pavers to create a path in the backyard , it immediately looked a lot better!

Then it was time for the next part, stage 2.5, laying down 2.5m3 of mulch while planting 60 tiny lillypilly plants at the front fence. I first had to dig 60 holes, remove the soil and then plant all of them in one go, I made the holes way too big, but fortunately I had a lot of compost to fill up the holes and again surprised myself with ow fast it went. Digging the holes took a full day and half, but the planting less than 5 hours and the mulch about a day, so in 3 days it was all done. I ended up ordering too much mulch, which I added to the back yard flower beds, not realising I had to move it all out of the way when we started stage 3, planting the back yard. Oops.

 

Early May we’d finally found a nursery that had most of the plants we were after, but of course I had to go back at least once to get a few more because it didn’t quite work out with the spacing. Welcome to stage 3, another three days of matting, digging, planting, fertilising and watering and now the yard is finally where it needs to be, hallelujah! Not to put too fine a point on it, I did all this by myself, while Yumi was off at work, saved a few $1,000 on labour and felt quite proud of how it turned out.

For someone who doesn’t like gardening much, I did alright. After 6 weeks, 59 of the 60 lillypillies are still alive and growing, but man is it a lot of work to water them every day! I am curious to see how they are doing when we get home from our Japan trip (I am writing this part in Kyoto waiting to go out on the town one more day).

 

 

Yumi’s work, hobbies and volunteering

Yumi is busy as always, but all with good things. They finally had some clarity on their CEO who had been mysteriously absent for months and is now no longer with the organisation, as they say. Doesn’t matter too much for her project and team, she essentially runs her own ship and the team loves her to pieces, as they should because she’s a great ‘boss’. Her budgets are looking good, more work keeps finding them and they get to do a lot of good for the community, go team!

She also did another dance performance with the Choo La La burlesque dancing group and this one was actually fun to watch as it was movie-themed and the dances were less sexy and more showgirl. She’s now also started with the fourth round of the Common People Dance project and that’ll be good fun when they put on their performance in October (I think).

The greyhound charity business has been busy as all get out! We have had a foster dog named Wombat for 6 weeks now and he is a bit of a hand full. We call him 150% Wombat because he does everything with maximum energy. He’s only 3 and wasn’t very good at racing, so he’s been mostly around greyhounds. Which means he has zero manners and enough energy to annoy Dash and me during the day for 8 hours straight! But he is also extremely lovable and funny, so we take the good with the bad and let him settle down while we hope for an adoption request that just came in to work out for him to find his forever home.

The poor guy has been through a lot in the past few months. At the first house, he kept jumping the fence, so that didn’t work. Next one didn’t work with the other dog. The third was a lady who got too anxious with him being stressed, so he ended up with us as the fourth home in four weeks. We first took him off his meds, let him take notes from Dash (who gave us many long-suffering looks) and play with all the toys and kill all their squeakies. He’s an idiot, but good fun. I hope the adoption request works out for him, them and us, but mostly for Dash who is so over having this 3-year old puppy around all the time, haha.

 

Yumi was also very busy preparing for the Dog Lover’s festival and other greyhound events, it always takes a lot of organising to get the materials, people and dogs together and tempers can flare, but fortunately she’s always there to calm things down. I just drive where I am told, drop off or pick up a dog, look after a friend’s dog for the day and don’t get involved in the drama if I can help it.

We also got a massive amount of food donated and then got a call to come and pick up some more, so I dragged 1,000kg of dog food up the driveway in 30 degrees and then another 400kg or so to hand over to a dog trainer who brings it back to Rockhampton. It’s all for the love of the doggies, so no complaints from me and it’s worth thousands of dollars that the charity can now use for other things, bonus!

Work but not actually work

I’ve not seriously looked into finding a job, responded to a few inquiries, put my CV on the pile for some roles, but I think I am no longer cut out to be an employee, so should probably stop looking in that direction and go with the life of the contractor. In that section there is a small job that I will do with a business in Sydney through an agency in the UK through the wonders of the internet) and a possible short term contract in July for Queensland Water of which I’ve heard both great and terrible things, so I guess we’ll see. Another very random thing came up, from a presentation Yumi and I did seven (!) years ago at a Disability Conference. It was her last day at work and we got to do a dual presentation and somebody remembered us from that. He now works for a business that wants to try self-directed teams (a certain management style that can work if you let it happen) so they asked me to put in a proposal after we come back from Japan. It might be a big piece of work or may be nothing, but it’ll be fun to do this work and maybe get Yumi involved on the side as well!

I’ve been very busy with writing about change management and finally got around to  designing my own model, which I called the Change Loop. It’s kind of boring, so I’ll spare you the details, but it’s something I wanted to do for a long time and now I have.  I also created a checklist for more ethical change, called the 4C framework and made good progress on the Conundrum Cards, which have been in development for 3 years and really need to get finished! Other than that I’ve been keeping busy with mentoring others and picked up another mentee in addition to Lindsey, I now also have Rachel to help find their way in their change careers. It’s very rewarding to be able to share my experiences and mistakes, so others can skip those parts and go straight for success in whatever they wanted to do.

I also made a lot of new friends in the consulting space when I presented on Ethical Change at a conference on the Gold Coast. It was much more fun than I had expected and I was glad I got a free ticket for the dinner, which I normally always skip, but I spoke with very interesting and entertaining people and the food was pretty good too. It was a bit of a long day though, from 6am in the car (so I could stop by the beach) and 10.30pm back home. Good way to spend a Friday.

 

Change Management Volunteering

Now that I have so much time, I put in a bit of extra time for CMI as well, organising a few extra events showing up for others and even starting up a new event on The Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast if the numbers work. I am working with another organisation called the International Association for Business Communicators (IABC) and it’ll be good fun to join forces and maybe get some more people from outside Brisbane interested in joining the change community.

I also put some time into drafting a set of professional guidelines for our profession, but I don’t think it will go anywhere. Strangely enough everyone complains about our profession being such a free-for-all, but as soon as you mention standards or rules, people get all angry and upset, so I consider it a good mental exercise to help me think through my own viewpoints on it al and that’s okay. You an lead the horse to water, but…you know the rest 😊.

 

Fire Service Volunteering

Now that the yard is done, I had some time to go and fix up the yard at our fire station, which had slowly been taken over by weeds, so over a period of a week and a few mornings, me and few fellow firefighter volunteers pulled the biggest ones out and now it looks a lot better. We haven’t had any fires of significance happen lately, so we keep busy with other things like this.

 

 

Four of us went to a school where we entertained about 100very excited 3-9 year old kids with sitting in the fire truck and using the firehose to spray water everywhere. It’s the best fun you can have without getting paid and a good workout because I had to lift most kids in and out of the truck and some just jumped straight out, but fortunately I was able to catch them all. After 2 hours I had my fill of kids and we were allowed to leave, but it’s nice that we can do this for the community. We also did a big show event in Ipswich and it was crazy busy, most people just stopping by to get a free wooden spoon, of all things, but hey, engagement is engagement and if we convinced a few more people to have a bushfire readiness plan, that’s a job well done. I only stayed for a few hours, but if everyone chips in, the job gets done.

I’ve also been getting more training to move up the next rank, called Firefighter Advanced Skills. I’ve done Operational Driving and Preserving a Fire Scene and next up are Mapping and Navigation next weekend, which will be a challenge for me for sure and one more that I cannot remember but hopefully it will be as good as Scene preservation, because that was good fun, learning how to ‘read’ the landscape after a fire came through to understand how and why it moved the way it did. We had one of the 10 or so State Fire Inspectors as an instructor and it was very clear he knew his stuff, which I always enjoy a bit extra as a teacher (of sorts) myself.

I’ve suggested a new way of electing our officers and thought it would get a lot of pushback, but not at all! Not only did everyone think it a good or reasonable idea, turns out that 15 years ago they used to do it like this as well. My suggestion was simply that we let members who want to go for an officer or management role fill out a short form with why they want the role, what they bring to the role and how they think to make a difference. Nothing spectacular, things move slowly in the RFS, but they do move, haha.

Japan trip

The trip was absolutely amazing, going from Osaka to Tokyo, to Hiroshima and finally to Kyoto. I’ve included our travel diary in this letter so you can read what we got up to every day. I would include some of the 350+ pictures, but maybe I’ll just bring them when I visit you for your next birthday, because a few really don’t tell the story.

Short mentions

·      My parents are travelling with the caravan across the Netherlands and Europe every few weeks it seems, I love that they still get to do that as it was always their dream.

·      I’m planning to add one more training day to my karate training. I already train Monday and Wednesday, so Saturday is the addition and a very different kind of training where we ‘fight’ each other using all the techniques we know for an hour. I am only progressing slowly because like with most things, I just have to work harder to get the same results, so let’s see how that goes. In a month or two I might be ready to do my green belt grade and maybe, just maybe my blue belt at the end of the year, but next year is fine too.

·      I got hit from behind in the new car! Nothing too serious and we were only doing 20km/hr on the highway in a traffic jam, but I was so surprised when it happened, I didn’t even realise I was hit at first. It was impossible to stop in a safe spot, but I had their license plate for the police report and for insurance and they came forward afterwards. It was a 78-year old man who misjudged the gap, it happens, no one got hurt, so all is well that ends well. Now we just have to get it fixed, which is annoying, but Zappy the electric vehicle will be good as new soon enough!

·      Our friends Helen and Robert (and Roo the Greyhound) have moved back to New Zealand after nearly 30 years in Australia and managed to buy a beautiful property with lots of space for themselves and Roo, good for them! We will miss them and the dinner parties we threw each other, but now we just have another reason to go to New Zealand

Sorry, there’s not so much news to share, it’s been quite busy with bigger things, so let’s see what the next letter will bring.

Stay warm and healthy,

Gilbert

Japan trip #2 Diary

Friday 5 June - Osaka travel and arrival

The flight was uneventful for its 9 hour duration. The food uninspired, the lady in the middle friendly and mostly asleep and while Yumi planned and memorised the travel guide, I read Supremacy, a book about the origins of OpenAI, DeepMind, Anthropic and the likes, unsettling and riveting at the same time.

It’s great travelling in Japan, especially with Yumi because everything just works and if we had just stayed on the train we were on, we’d have been at the B&B at 10pm, but Yumi saw an option to optimise and it turned out that it wasn’t quite that, so we arrived 30 minutes later than planned in our very artistic3-storey 8-person spacious accommodation. The stairs are probably the steepest I’ve seen and even a Sherpa would have another think if they’d really want t have a go, but as long as you go down them backwards, you’re mostly safe.

We knew we’d be up early the next morning (we were) so we had time to get sorted for the day then (we did). Our plan is to do as much of the outside stuff as possible, because Sunday promises a lot of rain and that is no fun.

Saturday 6 June -out on the town

The day started at 5am, which is 6am Brisbane time, so kind of late for me, but shopping needed to be done. We’re in a residential area where not too many tourists go, so if you don’t read or speak Japanese, good luck finding the vegan and vegetarian options. Somehow I still managed to get the essentials (aside from breakfast clusters/cornflakes) but one of the seven (!) minimarts surely has them, we just need to find them. On the way back I passed probably 500 bicycles and a few homeless people who have set up camp near the station. That’s a bit different from last time we were in Tokyo, but it’s already evident that Osaka is a very different town with a very industrial feel to it

We were out and about at 7am-ish with about 10,000 schoolkids going to do whatever school kids do on a sunny Saturday morning. There was Kendo gear, sports bags and musical instruments yet everything was calm and quiet, nothing like the feral energy you get from a regular weekday on the Brisbane trains.

We started with Shitennoji Temple, which had a very cool and steeply arched timber bridge and about 100,000 prayer flags and a few cats, it was very peaceful and quiet, good start to the day. From there we took the tram to Sumiyoshi Taisha temple, which reminded me a lot of the Phnom Phen Royal Palace, they might have had the same designer. Lots of Buddhas and shrines, the 5-layer pagoda was very cool and some of the other buildings were built with evident craftsmanship. Having recently played the videogame Ghost of Yotei (you play as a female kind-of-Samurai) I was mostly thinking how I could use my grappling hook to get to the top, but I think it would not be appreciated if I tried, so I didn’t, also, I lack the upper body strength to pull myself up 50+ meters and Yumi would die from embarrassment right after I died of a stroke…). There were dozens of turtles in the pond, doing their turtle things at turtle speed which made this a very chill experience as well.

Our schedule was anything but chill and by 10am we were 300 meters up in the air in the Akulas Tower and that was just the best! The views are amazing and just like the Tokyo Skytree you can see at least 40km in all directions. The city sprawls in all directions until it meets the mountains and the port, everything else is houses and (ugly) skyscrapers. Osaka is not a beautiful city from up high, but it’s impressive how much they managed to cram into such a relatively small area.

On the way down from the 60^th floor we passed through 4 levels of restaurants and the 16-level department store, which must have everything you can think of, but we were getting hangry and ended up going across to the park with our convenience store sushi rolls because the food options were too hard to comprehend. Also, sitting in the park with all the families and kids eating and running around  was a nice break after 15,000 steps in not-too-hot weather.

We did a round of the Keitakuen Gardens which were indeed very nice and peaceful in the middle of the bustle of Saturday traffic, being followed by a crow that didn’t look to impressed with us and kept a beady eye on us at all times, just in case we actually stepped on the grass, which we did not of course, we’re not savages.

Osaka Castle was next and that was…not what we expected. It’s beautiful from the outside and we were very happy we had the Osaka Amazing Pass so we could walk straight past the line and then we just climbed stairs to each floor to look at museum-like displays until we got to the top for a nice view and way to many people in such a small space. We quickly got out, stopped by the figurine museum, mostly for my sake, and then took the riverboat for 20 minutes to see Osaka from the water and wave at the people on shore as we were instructed to do.

Once off the boat we made our way to Dotomburi, snapped the picture with the running man and marvelled at how over the top everything was in every side street and along the canal. Our feet were starting to feel the 30,000+ steps so we made our way back to the B&B, stopped by the supermarket for supplies and relaxed a bit until it was time to go out for dinner.

We’ve started using the Happy Cow app and found Shinsekai Paprika Shokudo that caters to vegans because that’s a lot harder than expected. Instead of wasting a lot of time trying to find somewhere to eat, we now just look at the app and that helps a lot. You’d think that vegetarian and vegan food was more popular, but absolutely not, so we learned a thing and still had a good meal. 9pm seemed like a good time to go to bed after watching some very random Japanese tv shows that made no sense at all, but were entertaining all the same. Let’s get ready for a very rainy day tomorrow!

 

Sunday 7 June – More exploring and finding food options

It started raining before we even got started, so we changed gears and waited for most things to be open before we fetched the brollies and made our way to the station in the rain that would stay with us all day.

First stop for the day was Osaka Station to figure out the Shinkansen situation for Monday and Tuesday. We were hoping to find a bento box to have the whole train experience, but no one seems to keen to offer vegetarian or vegan options so we decided to figure something out for ourselves. 

By then it was time to go and see the second tall building, Umeda Sky Tower. The rain kept on raining so we rode the funky escalator, did a quick round of the rooftop, did not engage with the Boyband X exposition and were out the door in 30 minutes continuing on to some of the department stores and a quick sushi snack. 

Turns out department stores are the same across the world, although one was like JB Hifi (very overwhelming with sound and visual) but much, much worse, so we fled into the Uniqlo where Yumi bought new sunnies to replace the ones that fell apart yesterday and almost bought a new jacket, but didn't after all. Sigh.

Then began the long, confusing and frustrating search for our lunch place across many floors, twists and turns and even led to us sitting down to the  realise it was the wrong place, but I left my very comfy vest there and had to accept we will never find that cafe again. The quest continued and after giving up 3 times, but not really,  we finally found Secondroom or Vegan and Gluten free Osaka, you choose, they won’t tell you because veganism should be hard and that includes finding restaurants!. After all that drama, we had a lovely chat with the Angelino waiter about language and living in Japan and the food was very good, even if it was a very big lunch of okonomiyaki, gyoza and mushroom dough balls. Burp!

Refuelled, we were ready to go back to Den Den (Electricity) Town to look at some of the stores, stroll through the aptly named Cooking  Alley that had everything you could ever need in the kitchen, including fake sushi and other food items that were surprisingly expensive. We then continued on to the Joshin Toy Store which was a very cool five floors of everything die cast, model trains, airsoft guns, figurines and model build kits. I think all the men were there because they wanted to,  the 3 women I saw… were mostly there to make sure the men left at some point.

Eventually we left too, back to the B&B, again, for some well-deserved rest for our feet before heading out to the noodle place for some Udon and Ramen and even though we forgot our pocket wifi, we figured it out all the same. Good meal, bit salty, but after the big lunch we had it was just right.

Back through the rain once more with Yumi navigating us safely back as always, I just follow along and try to keep up! We go to bed at 9.30 because tomorrow is a 4.50am start for Tokyo!

Monday 8 June – Tokyo Time! 

The early start wasn’t too bad, even if there was a bit of rain on the way to the station, we got there mostly dry and on time to explore the many, many, many food options. Out of all of the literal 1,000s, 1 was vegan, which Yumi found of course and we brought our own travel snacks so we were all set and ready for a very fast train ride into Tokyo, 600km from Osaka, taking only 2.5 hours and not a minute more! It was my first time on the Shinkansen and it’s pretty cool. I mean, it’s still a train, but very fast and it has a very funny nose, lots of leg room and you get to see what other people are doing while the landscape rushes past.

There’s rice paddies, raging rivers, the mountains in the distance and then up close after another tunnel, mostly miniature cars (where are all the Toyota Corollas?) and not that many people. We made a few stops along the way, but arrived in Tokyo at 9.45am on the dot to get Yumi’s passport application sorted at the Luxembourg Embassy at 3.30pm, so we had some time to ourselves.

Now, we had been to Tokyo almost 10 years ago to the day and had done most of the touristy things already, so we decided to not go across the crossing, see the palace and rush up the SkyTree (all very cool) but instead went to Yanaka. It’s a quaint part of Tokyo, somehow obsessed with cats and because it was Monday and still early, not much happening, which was just as we like it. We walked around a bit, pointing things out and somehow talking about the sandbags for the Love  a Greyhound Marquee, but eventually we ended up in a park where we found some shelter from the drizzle that started and then got more serious to eat our lunch bento box which was a lot of fun, trying to find out what was what. Turns out the pickle is the worst item, but Yumi let me taste it first so she could avoid it…Nice.

With the rain not letting up, we bought two bigger umbrellas, after which the rain promptly stopped, so I carried them around the rest of the day awkwardly, as I do.

We decided Ginza shopping town would be a good place to go and the Uniqlo flagship store would be the starting point. Imagine hell, but everyone is super friendly, with 1,000,000 people all wanting to see the same unique t-shirt. Dude, I am just here for a hoodie! But we also bought a t-shirt and that light jacket we didn’t buy the first time (of course) and added a bit more weight to the backpack because if you can shop tax free and save another 10% on already cheaper than Australia prices, of course Yumi wants a part of that!

Next stop was Itoya, which is the fancy version of Officeworks, with pens for $1, but also $1,100, origami paper, very cool postcards (I bought one for Marlis) and lots of other stuff you really don’t need. The plan was to get to the café on the 12^th floor (the building and floors weren’t massively big, just very tall), but The Grand Navigator wanted to stop at a shoe shop nearby for some new Onitsuka trainers, but people were lining up outside, which is stupid, so we returned to the station and found some more snacks to eat on the train.

The visit to the embassy was good fun, with the required machine having a moment and refusing to cooperate, but the lady helping us had a great sense of humour so we had a good laugh and were out the door in just 30 minutes, done for another 10 years!

We finally sat down for a bit to rest our feet and rode the 600km back to arrive very much on time again back in Osaka, finally got to use our umbrellas in Osaka where it still rained and rained and went to bed at 10.30 because tomorrow is Hiroshima and the end of the Osaka stay so we need to get up 3 hours early because…well, just because. When I say we, I mean Yumi, but I just go along, that’s how you stay together for nearly 30 years folks and it’s not like I wasn’t awake anyway.

Tuesday 9 June - Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Site

We started the day bright and early, got the whole house back as we found it, leaving no trace that we were ever there, which has become a bit of a hobby of Yumi and it makes for great guest-reviews on AirBNB, so why not?! 7am and we’re all ready to go!

First stop is the FamilyMart to use what is called the Takkyubin service, that lets you send your luggage ahead, so it doesn’t get in the way while you travel. Kind of convenient, after you fill out the paperwork, pay the fee ($50), sing three Japanese karaoke songs of your own choosing and stand on one leg for 5 minutes in the middle of the shop while sleep drunk commuters are (not so) politely move around you. The Indian clerk (there’s a surprising amount of Indian people now, that wasn’t the case in 2016) seemed confused about the whole process himself, so fingers crossed our suitcases will be waiting at Yamato Kyoto when we get there tomorrow…

On to the station with our daypacks for Hiroshima and after buying the cookie tin souvenir that Yumi wanted (I just wanted the cookies), we made our way to the third Shinkansen trip from Osaka and settled in with about 1,000 extremely well-behaved schoolkids also going to Hiroshima, where we arrived without anything exciting happening, aside from more rice paddies, mountains, towns that all look the same and stops in towns that I only heard about in movies and the news.

Time for a tram ride this time and while the station is less busy, it’s still kind of confusing in a sense because how overly structured it is, but my tactic is to follow most of the foreigners and a very helpful station guide did the rest to get us on board. The IC card is absolutely great, works across cities and most types of public transport, please takes notes here, every Australian city!

It’s too early to check in at 11.00 at the hotel, so we drop off our bags and go see the sites.

We have lunch at a 5-in-1 restaurant for some Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki (a sort of omelette/frittata, but with noodles and a LOT of sauce) and then it’s time to go see the atomic bomb memorials we came to see.

It’s weird to realise that the city was bombed with just one bomb 80 years ago and while there is nothing left to remind you of the damage, aside from the mercantile building that has been in a billion photos, they manage to convey the inhumanity and black mark on the US’s leadership of then very well. We walk the Peace park and see the monuments, the folded paper cranes (birds), the memorials and hear the bell every minute or so, but until you get into the Peace Museum and shuffle past the survivor stories and images (and I’ve seen more than a few), it’s difficult to comprehend destruction so immense and that people did this to other people!

I want to believe that they simply didn’t know how absolutely horrific it would be to do this to other humans, but as I said to Yumi, it’s not like we’ve learned a lot since then...

The strangest thing was that whole groups of schoolkids, some couldn’t be older than 6 or 7 were also going in there and of course seeing dead and burned bodies in life-size format was bound to have some of them crying, but then again, I might have teared up a few times too.

Once we’re out and properly depressed, we walk around town some more, check out a few shops and find a very uplifting bread shop where we buy some snacks and breakfast that reminds me of Paris and the things we used to eat when visiting Yumi’s parents. Yumi’s feet decide it’s been enough for her, so we go back to the hotel, check in and I venture out alone with a map and our (amazing) pocket wifi, because I am not a complete idiot, to see the Castle and just experience the city as I do. My feet are just as tired, but I feel the need to see what I can, while we’re here, because I don’t think there’s much else to come back to once we’ve completed the visit to Miyajima tomorrow.

Hiroshima is a quiet city, like Tokyo and Osaka, very clean and organised, but a bit less well kept as some of the others and less gargantuan in size (only 1.1million people here), easy to walk around, even for geographically challenged people like me!

I call it a day after an hour and a half of seeing the Castle (annoying influencers alert) and walking the streets as planned and take my once-every-five-year bath to relax my legs a bit, nice! We go for noodles in a department store, which is not as weird as it sounds and have a great meal with a lovely lady server who looks to be at least 85 and uses hand gestures to explain what we need to do with the noodles and tempura. Must be for my benefit, haha.

We walk around a bit, looking for ice-cream, but not after 8pm you don’t, because everything ice-cream shuts shop then, which is fair enough, we still have the cookies and read some before calling it a night with our beautiful view from the 24^th floor.

Wednesday 10 June – Miyajima and Kyoto

A late start at 6.30am after a very quiet night’s sleep and the stunning view of the city and bay in the morning sunlight. Today we’re taking a boat ride to the island of Miyajima, which has a big gate, deer, lots of temples and history that… yeah whatever.

We get sorted and checked out by 7.45am, leave our bags at the hotel and get our tickets early so we don’t get left behind. We could have saved ourselves the trouble of getting some food because the island is full of food options and this is what I love about Japan, no inflated tourist prices, exactly the same as on the mainland, also very limited vegan options, but that’s okay, we haven’t starved yet and the Happy Cow app is working it’s magic quite well!

When we arrive after a 45 minute fly-boat trip with possibly the most entertaining PowerPoint presentation ever on the city, the oyster farms and water levels (there are a lot of bridges and high tide is an issue some day), we arrive on Miyajima with about 1,000 schoolkids (not kidding). They seem to keep streaming from all sorts of ferries and yet, still very well behaved and mostly orderly, until they see the deer of course…We know to leave them alone, they’re very pushy and can be aggressive because they know you have food, so we admire them from a distance and make our way to the Tori (Big Gate) and the beach.

They’ve done a great job in keeping the tourist experience to a minimum, although it must be annoying to the people living there, even if most people don’t make it into the neighbouring areas. There’s a lot more to see than just the 16m, 400-year-oldgate and its complex of shrines, treasury, mausoleum and performance halls, we’re lucky it’s low tide so we can almost walk up to it to take some pictures.

We keep making our way up the hills, strolling through temples and laneways, one beautiful temple after another and while I am not there for the religious elements, I can appreciate the magnificent craftsmanship that must have been required in the construction and maintenance of the ancient buildings. The 1,000s of buddha statues with their little red, green and yellow caps (but mostly red) make it look like a perpetual party and because it’s such a beautiful sunny day, everything looks that much better.

We do the ‘walk through the dark’ under a temple and reemerge as newborn people, eh presto. The experience only slightly diminished by two adults loudly speaking behind us the whole time like nervous teenagers…Another things I dislike as usual is that everything is super holy, but also all about money and donations. I am sure they need a lot of money to keep it all going, but it’s always a bit jarring when salvation appears to have a price and it comes at 500 yen per candle.

Anyway, we keep making our way around the island, stop by one more massive (and nearly empty) temple on the way back to the pier, brave the shopping street that is nicely tucked away and true to its name, you can buy and eat anything you could possibly want there and boy do people want things! Good for the shop keepers, we still have a city to get to, so we keep going, get too much attention from the deer to eat our lunch so I eat and walk and Yumi quietly judges me for eating while walking. It’s puzzling to me that she doesn’t live in this culture or society, but feels the need to live up to its standards. Live and let live I say, I prefer not to be hungry, so munch!

 The boat ride back is uneventful, we pick up our bags at the hotel, make a quick stop at the bakery we like for travel snacks only to find they also have one at the station when we get there after an uneventful tram ride. I think we’ve seen all we needed to see in Hiroshima, so we settle in for the last Shinkansen trip, this time to Kyoto in just under two hours. Great time to relax our feet and read a bit.

 Yumi expertly navigates us to the depot where we need to pick up our suitcases we sent ahead from Osaka and low and behold, they are right there, takkyubin for the win! We take a taxi because it’s not that much more expensive than hoofing it back to the station with our suitcases and we just want to be done with it AND get to ride in a Crown taxi which is just like I pictured it with the little curtains and the driver in his uniform, super fun.

 We get set up in the last apartment for the trip which has 4 sets of stairs and signs for everything, with the usual quirky language that always makes me smile. Okay, so what if I am easily amused!? We go for a quick burger which is a bit meh, but okay and do some shopping before going back and making an attempt at a plan, but we’re too tired to make a serious effort so we leave it for tomorrow!

 Thursday 11 June – Temples and more temples

 We started the day with clear blue skies and a trip by train and tram to some of the most famous temples North Kyoto.

 Arashiyama Village (tourist trap) is our first stop because it’s further away and will get busy during the day. In fact it’s already very busy at 9-ish when we arrive, but we avoid most of the tour groups and herds of schoolkids and enjoy seeing the 700-ish year old Tenryu-ji and its garden, traipse around the grounds a bit and since there’s only so many plants I can look at and ponds to contemplate life at, we move on to the next one.

 By now we’ve travelled by bus, tram, train, shinkansen, flyboat, cruise boat, taxi and our own two feet, look at us making it work without a car!

 Ryoan-ji was a villa to some important guy a long time ago, but he sure had the right idea about landscaping and gardening. The map of the grounds was not exactly to scale, because I settled in for another long stroll, waiting on Yumi to read all the displays, but after a look at the main building and a walk around a (very sizable) pond, that was it and on we went to Kinkakuji – The golden temple, which was just not as impressive as I had made it out to be in my head. It was nice and all, but still, it’s a two-tier structure, completely painted in gold. Very well painted, it looks super schmick, but I didn’t quite get what all the fuss and busyness was about. To be fair,  by then we’d seen a LOT of temples already and this one just had a different colour…

 We’re also playing the “heron game’, which means that very time you spot a heron you get 1 point, a stork is two points and a condor would be five, but very unlikely. So far, it’s 2-2 over the holiday, I was ahead by one point, but Yumi saw one in one of the ponds at the end of the day, so the battle continues.

 As did our trip to Daitokuji temple, which was a completely different experience in a massive complex that was completely devoid of most tourists, maybe there were ten and most others were Japanese tourists. I don’t need to see every building from the inside, so we just peeked around each courtyard and kept on keeping on, to end up getting an easy lunch at a train station before moving on to the Imperial gardens.

 The gardens were nice and all, it’s fun to see how the grounds crews seem to work WITH the environment instead of just chopping everything down that is misbehaving and they work so organised and clean, I love it. We walked one of the 1,000m gravel pathways to the castle, which we thought was closed, but was open and very cool to see. Yumi reads upon all these things and has the best factoids, but the visitor centre further back also had a display where it became obvious these people did not know how to work with fire, the bloody thing must have burnt down at least eight times and they just kept rebuilding it over 600 years. Extra points for persistence, but maybe figure out a better firefighting system?!

 After the palace we were ready to call it a day, got the whole squashed like sardines in a can experience during rush our when the schools were out and relaxed a bit at home before going out for dinner.

 We planned to go to Choice, which was all about vegan cheese and always a gamble, but they were close for a function so we ended up at Uno Ramen Sushi and Izagaya and that was easily the best cold and warm ramen we’ve ever eaten and the vegan sushi of salmon, octopus, tuna, cheese and inari was so delicious we happily paid double what we normally spend and we’d do it again! And again!

 Yumi took me for a stroll trough the Gion restaurant district which was nothing like Dotumburi at that time of day (fortunately?), but a nice stroll all the same and good to get our step count up to 30,000 for another day!

 

Friday 12 June – And more temples!

An early start once again, out the door at 7.30, straight into morning rush hour. The funniest thing is that little schoolkids travel by themselves. And I don’t mean 10-12 year old, these look like 4-5 year olds, with their huge backpacks and little hats, they are just the cutest! Less cute is the press of people in the subway, which I’ll remember next time it’s a bit busier on the train out of Brisbane! Fortunately we only have to go a few stops and we’re at Fushin Inari, the place with all the vermillion (orange) portals/gates.

There are indeed many, almost as many as the number of tourists and while the ridiculous antics of people posing for their Insta or whatever account are both funny and annoying, I try to be less judgmental and keep failing, what a way to visit a shrine by making it all about you. Anyway, we walk around through big and small gates winding up the hill and I try to get Yumi to follow me up 40 minutes one-way but as she’s the smarter of the two of us, she talks me out of it, despite the promise of wild boars and we save our feet and steps for the rest of the day.

Glad to have seen it, I don’t think I have to see it again, especially the gates sponsored by companies, if there was ever a critique of commercialised religion, this might just be it.

Next up is another big Buddhist temple Tofukuji that has a famous bridge and a beautiful garden (they all do), but no tofu, go figure! It’s almost completely deserted, which is a nice break from where we were earlier. We walk around, laugh at some more influencers instructing their clueless boyfriends how to take the perfect shot no one cares about and go on to the next temple, which is Sanjusanjen, which loosely translates to 30 lengths of something that make up a long distance, which is kind of Australian. How big is it? Well, it’s not small. It’s enormous, at least 150 meters long to make space for 10 rows deep of 100 same but different statues, a massive many-armed buddha in the middle  and 30 deity statues at the front. The schoolkids seemed to have followed us here as well, they are everywhere, do they even ever go to school?! The garden is nice (again) to sit in and get away from the crowds, which turned out to be a good thing because the biggest tourist trap in the history of tourists traps is about to come up on the schedule.

Kyomizudera is everything that’s bad about tourist traps, narrow streets, people wearing kimonos poorly, shops everywhere and 10,000 people a space that fits maybe 3,000, good times! Like the Inari gates, these places are probably best visited earlier than midday, so we kick ourselves for doing this now and continue on. There are always little pockets of quiet and we’ve gotten good at finding them, so we take our pictures, look at the very impressive construction that still stands after 400+ years and listen to the many different languages all marvelling at the various buildings. We have lunch in a lovely small café that has 3 menu items, all vegan, including freshly made donuts, and some cool jazz playing in the background. With our batteries and bellies full again, we hunt for a Totoro t-shirt for Yumi but the flagship store doesn’t stock them, which I am sure makes sense in Japan, so we continue on to Nishiki Market through Ninenzaki (shopping street) and Higashiyama.

We pass through Gion (food district) again and stop at the Pokémon Centre where the line is so long I decide to try for a different souvenir, anywhere else really. By the time we get back it’s nearly 30,000 steps again and we still have to go out for dinner.

A few hours later we go to the place that Yumi found in Gion that’s on the third floor of a building that could be anything, that has lots of vegan options and we love every bit of the vegan sushi (avocado and mushrooms), the dumplings, the Kyoto style fries (just like regular fries but more salty) and the vegan ice-cream in 5 flavours. It’s unexpectedly raining on the walk back, so Yumi, afraid of melting, takes us to explore Gion a bit more and the variety of food and shops is just astounding and the shopping arcade is huge, streets stretching out in all directions. We somehow make it through the rain (it wasn’t that bad really, just a few drops) and call it an early night, this eating and walking business is hard work.

Tomorrow we’ll do some more tourist-y things, but we’re starting to wind down and prepare for our flight back to the doggos on Sunday 9.45pm!

 Saturday 13 June - Castles and crowds

 We started the day much more relaxed and a bit later. Well, Yumi did, I went for a grocery run (walk) to e larger supermarket to get some breakfast items and fruit and get a sense of early morning Kyoto (calm, cool and quiet). We didn’t have far to go for the first stop, Nijo castle, just a 15-minute walk away.

It was relatively quiet still as we arrived almost exactly when it opened at 8.45am. This one has been around for about 350 years and was the home of the last Shogun before he ceded power to the emperor and that was it mostly for the Samurai too. It was cool to go inside and get an impression of what it must have been like to live in the building. Mind you, all the furniture is gone, but the wall and ceiling paintings are all still there, as are the squeaky nightingale boards, that kind of sound like birds twittering if you use your imagination. I always wondered why the tigers looked so weird, but turns out the artists had never actually seen a live one, only skins and images, so that explains a lot. Not why they thought that leopards were every 3^rd tiger born, but hey, I am sure people in 400 years form now will wonder what we were think as well.

The palace itself was worth the wander, but the gardens were also very well done, with an opportunity to go up one of the walls and stand where the emperor stood twice, which was a big deal because he didn’t get out much. Apparently he also took a real interest in gardening and was involved with the design. I don’t think we’d have a lot to talk about, but him and Yumi would get along just fine.

Onwards we went to Kyoto station to figure out our tickets and the train back to the airport  and have a look at the massive building. It reminded me of the Market Hall in Rotterdam, but even bigger and more industrial looking. I took the 20+ flights of stairs because I am that guy, while Yumi rode the escalator and I surprised myself by not collapsing in a heap at the top. We ate our mid-morning snack (lemon custard thing for Yumi and fancy bread roll for me) with view of Kyoto tower and the city and then got organised around the train tickets so we don’t have to figure it out on Sunday. Check!

We considered visiting even more temples, gardens and shrines, but temple fatigue had set in, so we went shopping for souvenirs, shirts and crackers instead. We had a nice lunch in a clothing shop that had completely vegan lunches, so I went with the omelette and rice, but it wasn’t what I had hoped (as usual) but Yum’s food looked amazing! We had good fun pointing out all the weird and wonderful shops, Nishiki market is enormous and covered, so super busy, but also relatively cool. We went to find a few toy and figurine stores, including the Nintendo shop and had a great time just looking around. I am always in awe of how much easier it is for Yumi to navigate, even with Google Maps I have to stop every 20 meters or so to make sure I don’t get lost.

We called it a day at 4pm and relaxed at the BnB for a bit, went for a nice diner in a place that had zero customer service (not rude, just absent, working in the kitchen) but a very extensive menu so we had a great meal and were back home at 8pm after a nice stroll through the neighbourhood.

Tomorrow we don’t have much planned, two museums, maybe a garden and a Starbucks, all in less than 1km away from the BnB where we’ll store our luggage until it’s home time at 4pm.

Sunday 14 June – The last bits

We gave ourselves a slow start to the day, leaving the BnB in near pristine condition before heading to The Museum of Kyoto, not to be confused with the Kyoto Museum, which is completely different and somewhere else, this was just down the street and our feet were very happy with that. They had a big exposition on a collection of woodblock painting by two artists (Hirosuge and Hokusai) that even I had heard of and Hakusai painted that very famous wave with mount Fuji in the background.

After that we continued on to the manga museum, housed in an old school building with what must be the creakiest floors in the whole of Japan, but also 300,000 manga artefacts and some interesting background to the cultural phenomenon it is. I had no idea that Dragonball Z (look it up) was more than 40 years old and that’s not even an old-timer, they go back as far as the 1940s. Seeing them all on display and in chronological order does paint a good picture of how much has changed. They also had artists in the museum showing how to draw and create the stories, which was pretty cool. I wish I could draw like that, but should say I wish I had the patience to learn to draw like that, because it’s 100% teachable, if you have the patience…

Time for lunch at a place we walked past at least 6 times and didn’t notice, but this time I had a very creamy and tasty white curry and Yumi had a more spicy yellow curry with noodles and rice, because why not?!

We spent the rest of the time buying a travel pillow for me, browsing a Sunday market in front of city hall and lounging at Starbucks until it was time to grab a taxi and head to the station to take the train to the airport.

On the way there we passed a ginormous temple that we somehow didn’t visit, but you know what? It’s been good, I am sure it’s wonderful, but I want to go home, I miss my dog.