by Cody Poulton
When I moved back to Kyoto in August I had to find somewhere to live for the long term. The old house in Katsura was no longer liveable; besides, I wanted to be closer to town. A friend of a friend, Mr. Fujita, was a real estate agent, so I asked him if he could find me a few places to look at. I told him my price range and roughly where I wanted to live. In a couple of days, he had three places lined up, so we met the next Saturday to see them. The first was an apartment in a condominium building, the second a machiya, or traditional townhouse, and the third was a three-bedroom house built sometime in the ’eighties not far from the river.
It was a blazingly hot day just before Obon, the festival when the spirits return from the dead to be entertained by their offspring. After three days, the spirits are sent home with bonfires on five of the surrounding mountains. If you can stand the heat, it’s one of the most beautiful of Kyoto’s annual festivals. Many try to find the roof of a taller building to witness the lighting of the okuribi, or “sending fires.”
We first visited the condominium apartment, which was located on the top floor of a high rise in the north of town. Though an older building, I was assured that it had been built after strict laws had been enforced to make tall structures like that safe in all but the most devastating of earthquakes. The apartment had been completely renovated, with new flooring and wallpaper and a new kitchen with an induction range. The only thing unchanged apparently was the toilet, from which issued a mouldy smell, which bothered me. Mould had been one of the things that had driven me out of our old house in Katsura.
The best part of the place, however, was the extraordinary view to the west, north, and east of the city. From the bedroom windows I could see four of the five mountains where they light the bonfires of Obon. To the west was Mt. Funaoka and Hidari Daimonji, and behind that Atago, Kyoto’s highest mountain; to the north, Takagamine and Kurama; to the northeast, Mt. Hiei; and east, Nyoigatake, otherwise known as Daimonjiyama. These mountains to the east and west are called Daimonji because the character for “big” (大) is traced out on their slopes. The outlines of a sail ship and the characters 妙法 (myōhō), meaning “wondrous dharma,” were inscribed on the sides of two other mountains to the north. A fifth mountain with the image of a torii gate was hidden behind a hill over to the northwest in Arashiyama. You could see it only if you lived over that way.
I thought to myself, what a great place to throw a party when they light up the mountains at Obon! But better yet was the effect when I opened all the windows. A refreshing breeze blew through, from west to east. One hardly needed the air conditioning. For most anyone in this city, which sits in a basin hemmed in by mountains, the summer is oppressively hot and humid and one can scarce survive it without the blast of an air conditioner.
The second place we saw was the machiya, which was located further to the north behind Imamiya Shrine. The place had been modernized with a new kitchen and bathroom, but it was hot upstairs and it was hemmed in by other houses. I imagined the downstairs would be dark and cold in the winter. The third place was a fine house, well built, but much too large for a single person like myself.
I could have asked the realtor to show me more places, but classes were beginning soon, I was sick of moving from one Air BNB to the next, and I was taken with the first place I’d seen. I am not one for making snap decisions, especially on first impressions, but I liked what I saw and knew I couldn’t find anything like it anyplace else. After a couple of weeks of negotiations and pieces of paper passing back and forth, the contract was sealed and I had the keys.
Continue reading
Recent Comments