Sleep. Whisky. Visa. Cafes.

It turns out I completely forgot to mention the tea ceremony itself in my last post. For a few hours last Sunday, Nakamura-san hosted a tea ceremony as part of a machiya festival that has been happening at different locations across Kyoto.

Part of the week leading up to said tea ceremony was testing different varieties of grappa and matcha tea being blended. After many tests, we found the right mixture. Tea purists out there be damned, it was delicious. Anyhow, here’s some pictures from the event! (With thanks to Tomoko, Shino and Shiori – arigatou gozaimasu!)

Nishimura-san

Ambience Off The Charts

Tea by Candlelight

And here’s a piece of artwork that I’ve been lucky enough to have on loan from the very talented Gan-chan.

Gan-chan's Artwork

All of those pictures were taken in my room. Fancy much?

I had one of those “Oh my God, this was a really good idea” moments a few weeks ago. I honestly can’t remember whether I remembered to mention it in here or not, but I’ll go ahead and act like I haven’t. Here I was, standing on a street corner in Kyoto at 4am, slightly drunk, wolfing down deep-fried chicken from a convenience store and it hit me that this may well be one of the best decisions I’ve made in my lifetime.

Last Monday I was where I am right now, at a local bar that I know only as Shi-chan, because that’s the name of the owner. She’s been kind enough to let me use her WiFi to post this update so I’m not spending hour upon hour uploading pictures via painfully slow mobile internet.

On Tuesday night, Greg, Uwa-chan and Tetsuo and I headed out for dinner and some drinks. One of these drinks took place at a bar run by monks. A little expensive, but a great atmosphere and amazing selection of drinks. Their menu is something like 30 pages in length. Anyone who visits me in Kyoto will be treated to seeing this bar.

The truth is I didn’t get up to much this week due to a rather expensive Thursday. By expensive I mean it may have cost me close to $100AUD, but when you’re running on a budget it’s a fair chunk o’ change. Thursday I headed out to Osaka and back to pick up my Visa, which has now been approved. The length of this particular Visa is three years – I’m undecided on whether I will use the entire three years or not, but I might as well just play it by ear anyhow and see how things play out.

More Italian cooking took place this night and now I’ve got two nights cooking for people this week booked in already. I might as well look into opening a small restaurant at this rate, even if my array of dishes consists of less than 10 in total.

MOAR PICTURES BECAUSE I ROLL LIKE PAPARAZZI, SUCKAHS!

I wouldn’t go to this hairdresser. Just sayin’.

OH DAMN HAIR AGAIN?

OOPS! Hair?! It’s not like I wake up everyday and go “OOPS! Hands. They’re not meant to be there. How did they get there?” or it’s the most honest shit hairdresser you’ve ever come across. “OOPS – I gave you a shitty haircut and now all your friends are going to mock you until it grows back. And you paid me to do this you. HA!”

Now this next one, I dunno about you, but if I was thinking about purchasing a delicious frozen yoghurt (or froyo, if you wanna split hairs – OOPS! – almost-instantaneous callback for the win.) I would not want to be greeted by this…

A Bit Shit, Honestly

Service Attendant: What would you like, sir?

Me: I know, give me that steaming pile of turd you used for your logo. I can’t wait to bury my face into that. YUM!*

*Potentially dramatised for effect

Now there’s nothing funny about this next picture. Nothing at all. This is just an awesome cafe that was recommended to me by a friend here.

I can only imagine opening something like this in Melbourne and having it overrun with people in the space of 10 seconds of it being open. That’s never really the case here. There’s so many amazing places that it’s impossible not to find something unique, charming, odd or just damn pleasant and relaxing.

And to top it off, the coffee was damn good. DAMN GOOD. I expect to be doing a lot of writing from this cafe in the near future.

CAFE

On Friday evening, I was joined in my loungeroom by a firefly. I decided not to name him or her, as this isn’t really something that will probably happen again in the near future. Yes, fireflies occasionally appear at the river directly behind my house, so expect some more photos from that. But this one rogue firefly decided to fly into my house and spend some quality time with me.

Firefly

The bulk of the time this little chum spent buzzing about my house was me just looking on gobsmacked with awe. Thankfully I managed to get a half-decent shot.

What else happened this week? Well, because not a lot was actually happening due to constraint o’ funds, I watched a ton of movies.

Himizu (2012) – great piece of work by Sono Sion. Sad, but very moving. Adaptation of a classic manga set in post-Tohoku earthquake/tsunami Japan.

Rurouni Kenshin (2012) – a great manga adaptation to live-action. Hopefully other potential live-action adaptations take note of this. (I’m looking at you, potentially never-to-be made Akira film) One for the action fans.

LoveDeath (2006) – Ryuhei Kitamura made cult hit Versus back in the day. LoveDeath is 2 hours and 40 minutes of pure joy. I laughed out loud a number of times.

Until next week!

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