Summer in Japan brings lively festivals, tempting street stalls, kimono-clad strollers and lights in the trees. It brings fireworks and sparklers, stripey tents and trickles of laughter. It keeps children out late, fishing for plastic toys in puffy round paddling pools, and proudly bouncing home with bags of goldfish in their pudgy little hands.
Do What You Love is growing fast, and we are delighted to work with a team of brilliant people based on three continents to bring tools and inspiration to you. I thought I’d introduce our newest team members to you:
Back in my days of having a ‘job’, my frequent response to the question “How are you?” was “I’m so busy”. Thinking back to those days, I even used to write that in emails to friends, as if being busy was my news and something to be proud of. What was that all about?
A couple of days after we arrived in Kyoto, my man and I went on a long cycle across the city (hence the dodgy outfit in the photo below!) and out west, through rice paddies and bamboo forests under a huge blue sky. I wanted to show him where I lived for a formative year when I studied here at the tender age of 19, doing homestay with a Japanese family.
I had written them a postcard and intended to pop it through their door, hoping to arrange to meet up some time soon. But when we turned into their road, my homestay mother was out in the street chatting to a neighbour. “Besu???” she cried. (There is no ‘th’ sound in the Japanese language so my name becomes Besu!) I was surprised she recognised me after more than 15 years, but she did right away. Within five minutes she had called over my homestay father (the sweetest old man ever), invited us in for sweet potatoes and tea, phoned her daughter, got the old photo albums out and got the neighbours round!
With my homestay parents, Mr & Mrs Ito, outside the house I lived in for a year aged 19
As we sat in their living room sipping tea I had a kaleidoscope of flashbacks – feeding fish sticks to their dog from the little kitchen table, making long distance calls to my family from the phone by the window (no Skype back then!), checking the bottom step of the staircase for letters that had arrived in thin blue airmail envelopes, being dressed in a kimono for my coming-of-age ceremony back when I was 20… one after another the memories came rushing back, and it was lovely to be able to share them with my man.
When we had finished up our tea and my man had polished off the last of the sweet potatoes, we and half the neighbourhood headed over to Heiankyo for a festival by Ikeshita pond, with more tea served by ladies in kimonos. What a lovely unexpected interlude that was – and such a blessing to know there are people in this city with whom we go way back.
We are here in Kyoto for six months. A long time. A short time. Depends on your perspective. It’s an interesting amount of time, because it is long enough to get familiar and settle into routines, but short enough to want to make the most of every moment.
We have a big monthly calendar posted on our kitchen wall and I just noticed that as of this week we are half way through our trip. This set me off on a flurry of planning how to squeeze in all the things we want to do, places we want to go and people we want to see before we have to go home (right at the bottom of the last page of that wall chart). The white spaces are quickly filling, but I am trying hard to preserve some of them with nothing written on them, for it is often these moments of nothing in the diary that lead to unexpected discoveries, relaxed happy days in the sun, improptu trips and all sorts of fun.
Kyoto is good for me. It has made me slow down, reflect, soak up the beauty around, head out somewhere new almost every single day. Look up, look down, look around. Look inside. Take time to stand still.
The ideas I pushed away before we headed out here (because I was so crazily busy) have been invited in, and are currently washing around in my head. Now is not the time for filtering, that will come later. Now is the time for letting them all flow forward, and seeing what emerges. And there is no better place to do it than here, on an adventure, with the luxury of time…
A month ago today I got engaged and have been beaming ever since. Many of you asked for more details of the engagement, so here you go!
We began the day (my birthday) with a train ride across the beautiful Hozukyo Gorge. These carp-shaped koinobori flags are hung out to celebrate Children’s Day. (Excuse the blur – the train was moving!)
And then for a stroll through the bamboo forest of Arashiyama (‘Storm Mountain’)…
Totally oblivious to what was coming, I was happily snapping away with my camera. If I look back at those photos now, my man looks a little nervous… We found a gorgeous Japanese garden built lovingly over 30 years by a film star from the fifties, designed to offer a different view at every turn.
As we were walking through the lush greenery, my man was telling me a story. And then suddenly in it he talked about asking a ‘very important question’. Then there was silence. I had been taking photos ahead of him, and turned around to find him on one knee, asking if I would marry him! (See here)
It was all so perfect. After lots of crying and laughing we went to a little tea house in the corner of the garden for green tea and cake, and started planning the rest of our lives together…
And here it is… my lovely engagement ring!
My man decided to let me choose which one I loved the most, and we got it made here in Kyoto.
I think it is just perfect and can’t stop looking at it.
Seven sparkly diamonds!
What do you think?
In the months leading up to our trip away I was working like a crazy thing. 14-18 hour days, and weekends, trying to get everything done before we moved, not to mention packing up the house. At that time my man really took care of me, cooking all our meals, doing most of the cleaning, running me hot baths, giving me foot massages and making me turn my computer off if it got past midnight.
Now we are here in Japan, there has been a complete role reversal – of course he still looks after me in his lovely way, but especially these first few weeks it has been up to me to pay bills, order food in restaurants, read maps etc, simply because everything is in Japanese. He is picking up the language at an astonishing rate, but it has been a very new experience these first few weeks for me to be the one who sorts everything out. I want him to learn quickly and get his independence, but I kind of like being able to help him this way…
I decided to take my man on a magical mystery tour to introduce him to some of Kyoto’s most famous sites. Despite being a tourist myself I really don’t like touristy places, but most places that have a lot of tourists are swamped for a good reason, and Fushimi Inari is no different. We opted to go on a weekday, when everyone else was at work, and had most of the mountainside to ourselves.
Fushimi Inari is quite an extraordinary place. A few miles south of Kyoto, it is home to over 1000 red torii shrine gates, which weave around the mountainside.
‘Inari’ is the name of the god of rice, a diet staple and fundamental part of Japanese life. There are thousands of Inari shrines across the country but the one at Fushimi is the most famous.
It was founded twelve centuries ago, and remains an active part of the community. Nearly every single one of the 1000+ cinnabar red shrine gates are ‘sponsored’ by local businesses.
But when a company’s name is written in beautiful flowing kanji lettering, it somehow doesn’t feel commercial at all. Each of them offer prayers for prosperity – and some of them pay as much as $150,000 for the privilege!
I visited with my parents many years ago and we purchased a tiny red model gate from the shrine shop and hid it in the forest, off the mountain path.
We searched for it but couldn’t find it this time round – I like to think that a cheeky wild monkey moved it and uses it as the entrance to his little house in the trees…
