Home in Kokusaikaiken

DAN

I've probably gone on quite a lot about how much I've enjoyed all the interesting places in Japan. The one thing that has topped all the attractions that we've been to so far is the people. Everywhere we've travelled, the Japanese people have welcomed us and been really friendly. The amount of hilarious encounters and random conversations that we've had with people in the street is probably something that will stick in my mind long after this journey is over.

For the last four days we've been staying in Kokusaikaiken, which is a northern suberb of Kyoto. It's quite a sleepy place that is surrounded by forest mountains on three sides. I booked a room in a guesthouse run by Rumi, an artist who also has her studio in the house (link to her site).

Rumi's house

One of the main ideas that runs through Rumi's art is "looking for home", which (in her words) is what all of us are really looking for deep down. I must confess that I didn't realise this when I booked the room, but it turned out to be a really great place to stay as she made us feel like we were one of the family.

Some of Rumi's art work. There is some magic in it that you will only discover if you play with them

A diving helmet that also acts as a mirror of the soul, if you look for long enough

This was a work in progress of an old lady with the same helmet as above. The books were handmade, one of them a little comic about a cat chameleon

Talking of being part of the family, there was a really lovely family a few houses down the road who wanted to meet Flo. She is the first girl who's come to stay at Rumi's house and their daughter was interested in speaking with her.

New friends! Rumi is on the right and doesn't like having her picture taken!

On the evening of our first day there we went to their front garden and had a massive water fight. It was such a relief in the heat and a lot of fun. In the evening we set off fireworks, played with sparklers and had shaved ice with syrup. We got to try loads of flavours, tasty! They even invited us for grilled octopus but were watching the sunset in Nara and didn't get back in time. The amount of nice things that they and Rumi invited us to was really heart warming.

Flo making friends...

Today as we were leaving they had one last cool thing to do, which was dress Flo up in a Yukata (summer kimono) for an impromptu photo session. We were already to leave for 10am checkout, but we ended up staying for a couple of hours more, just to play around and talk. I'm running out of ways to say how lovely it was.

Yukata'd up!

Posing with the celebrity

It was such a great way to spend some of our time in Kyoto. Of all things that I had on my holoday to do list, meeting a Japanese family and being invited to spend time celebrating with them wasn't on there at all. This was only because I didn't think it would be possible, but thanks to Rumi we had a really wonderful time. I hope one day Rumi can come to stay with us in London and we can show her the same hospitality.

I'll talk about Nara in the next blog post, but I feel so behind now! We've already been to and left the Mt.fuji region. With ice caves, a suicide forest and the guiness world record breaking scariest haunted house, it might take a while to write about it all. Then there's the capsule hotel and our return to Shinjuku...