Going West

[steepholm]

I'm now back in Bristol, and the duties of 2026 beckon, so I will wrap up my account of my Japan trip quickly. After Onomichi my next stop was Kobe, where I was meeting up with friends: Mitsuko for lunch, Yuka for dinner, and then Ayako and Irina the following day, when we visited the Kitano Ijinkan where Western merchants lived when Kobe was a treaty port after the Meiji restoration.



We visited two of the Ijinkan houses - ones I recommended, having been to them before: the English house (with its Sherlock Holmes and Alice themes) and the Trick House over the road. It's strange to think that Conan Doyle and Alice Hargreaves (nee Liddell) lie just a few miles apart, in graves in the New Forest - and are also juxtaposed here in such a different context.





Then it was on to Odawara, where I spent Christmas day itself in the warm bosom of the Kodaka family, where three generations had gathered to partake in the sacred Christmas ritual of eating KFC. The little boy, Rui, was particularly charming - going off into another room and calling out "Irasshaimase!" every now and then while people went in and pretended to buy things.



One great thing about staying there is the view from my bedroom window, at least when the weather is right - as it was on Boxing Day morning.



Finally, I went back to Tokyo and a couple of nights with Rei (my former tenant) and her husband Shuzo in their flat in Kanda. It was great to catch up with them. And my friend Hiroe took me to a puppet theatre, which has been going since the 1970s, just five minutes' walk from Shinjuku station. There we saw a rendition of an old Slovak folk tale about a mistreated girl who has uncanny encounters with the spirits of the months while out picking strawberries...



And that was that - back to Bristol, then a quick trip to Brighton to see my brother and ring in the New Year, and now I'm in my own study again for the foreseeable.

In spare moments during this trip I was a) reading the Kalevala with profit and pleasure and b) copying out 200-year-old letters, or rather scans of them. Much more on that in entries yet to come, but I've been making some interesting discoveries of the family history variety.

Comments

[cmcmck]

Welcome home!

[steepholm]

Thank you!

[calimac]

re the juxtaposition of Conan Doyle and Alice Hargreaves - a small churchyard in the Thames Valley contains the graves of both George Orwell and H.H. Asquith, a juxtaposition bizarre enough that I had to go visit it, where I found them both, Asquith under a small sepulcher and Orwell with a simple tombstone anonymously under his legal name with no annotation.

[steepholm]

It's interesting how some graves become much-visited shrines and others not so much. Doyle's (in Minstead) normally has a pipe or two left as an offering; but I think that people are uncomfortably with the idea of Alice as dead, or even as an old woman, and it seems that she or her family were also wary of pilgrims, because she is buried simply as 'Mrs Reginald Hargreaves'. But, if you know, you know.

[sovay]

the English house (with its Sherlock Holmes and Alice themes)

I love the picture of you at Baker Street!

(I didn't know that about the graves.)

[steepholm]

I was afraid that my 'Santa Devouring an Elf' (after Goya) T-shirt might spoil the effect!

[sovay]

I was afraid that my 'Santa Devouring an Elf' (after Goya) T-shirt might spoil the effect!

Just adds to the meta.