Diary: Starting off 2020 with Coffee and Classes etc.

A coffee break at “Tartan something or other” (not actual name) in downtown Okayama

So it goes, the festive season passes yet calendar stays busy with the usual sorts of things. Yesterday included returning books to splendid library, a few letters (Switzerland and Indonesia) to the post office, a stop for the best ramen, and a visit to a chiropractor and then a super good little (i mean little) coffee shop – like just perfect right?

In amongst, we repaired/re-did a wall in Tsuchida Cottage, attended a parenting class(!), went to opera variety show, hit up Hatsumi-san’s piano recital, moved some brick around outside, printed more flyers for Mae Maes gig, talked to a guy about replaced some drafty windows, recycled plastic items, booked a trip to Nagasaki…

Here is a variety of snippets collected along the way, with minor annotations as possible.

we ordered umeboshi by the kilo – i love these pickled plums and nope to make them myself one of these days soon but in the meantime, order up in bulk! salty, sour goodness

one morning i awoke to Ryoko singing snippets of so many songs – realized she was tidying up all her sheet music/scores etc.

tidied up the Kamidama a little bit with fresh items to bring good fortune and happiness more and more

the shrine sits on top of a bookshelf – we tried to mount it to wall but not successful (so far) however, you can see other fun items on our momento shelf but current books in action – this is right next to my desk and always changing

brown rice bowl with kimchi, nori, green onions and other goodness

above pictured with spoon however 98% of eating is done with hashi (chopsticks) – made a video for a friend to show technique as he is a 40-something year old man without this necessary skill – shocking :) shall i share the silly video?

upstairs in the 300+ year old grain barn (which is dry and solid) Father in law has a massive collection of old manga (graphic novels) which are getting sorted into sets, tided up, documented, photographed and then sold (if all goes to plan) then i will fill up the space with other items (not sorry)

another coffee break at Cowbell cafe while out on errands

oh we had lunch at Cowbell too – such a nice lunch

even more lunch at Cowbell – curry obviously) / some Japanese curry is very sweet rather than spicy but this was nicely balanced between the two tastes

Ryoko prepared some lovely letters – we are a solid pair in the correspondence department among others

ths ugly wall got covered by some new boards

Memo about wall project:

we actually started with some really pretty brass nails but, the wall we were attaching to, well… It’s sort of thin laminate sheets somehow glued to some kind of thin wood brace attached to a hollow (I mean nothing whatsoever inside as far as insulation or whatever) wall. So the nails didn’t work because they just kind of bounced so switch to the screws, thankfully.
Was very briefly tempted to do a “full Trevor“ and pull down the crappy paneling and do a “proper job“ but was afraid that pulling down the paneling would turn into a epic project. And really redoing one wall would just be a temptation to start redoing everything and before you know it blah blah blah… I mean I’m busy, I have poetry to right hand a baby coming, you know how it goes.
So, the thin flat boards (which we cut to size obviously) were attached with four screws each, and at least two of them caught onto something – the others at least gripped onto the crappy laminate paneling.

Then added a footer and a header to cancel it altogether and we got it done in an afternoon. My girl was quite remarkable running the cutest pink powerful Makita drill as well.