Sano Shuji, our Great Mushroom Teacher
Sano-san is our great friend and ‘shishō’ 師匠- the Master – of all things fungi. Check out my story in Kyoto Journal, issue 104, ‘A Fascination with Fungi’, or drop by the Kyoto Imperial Palace Gardens once a month to join Sano-san on one of his brilliant Sunday morning fungi forays. Mrs A. and I are usually there. There is a Japanese translation of the text included, if you wish to show it to a Japanese friend (or are Japanese yourself 笑).
Sano-san will also be leading a Mushroom hunt to coincide with the Kansai Mycological Club’s 30th annual mushroom event on Saturday 28th October from 2 to 3 pm in the Kyoto Botanical Gardens . I’ll be at the venue providing English translation, though likely in the main exhibition space, not Sano-san’s lecture.
Dates: October 28 (Saturday) to October 29 (Sunday), 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. (until 4:00 p.m. on the last day). Why not bring along a mushroom or two and get it identified by the experts.
The following pics are from the Botanical Gardens event in 2019:
This is one of the Sunday-morning Kyoto Imperial Gardens forays led by Sano Shuji:
Help us to Help Nepal – Please Sponsor Me on our May 31st Walk 2015 KAMOGAWA 10km スポンサーウォーク
Our Nepali friends carrying relief supplies into the quake-stricken Nawakot province
Our little girl Laxmi at the Laliguras Childrens’ Home in Kathmandu
English follows Japanese.「2015 KAMOGAWA 10km スポンサーウォーク」 日時：2015 年 5 月31 日（日） コース： 三条̶北山̶三条の鴨川沿い約10km 途上国に住む子供の教育や生活の支援を目的に鴨川沿い10km を歩く 「KAMOGAWA 10km スポンサーウォーク」を今年も開催します。このイ ベントは2005 年に始まり、今年で11 年目を数えます。ご存知の通り、先 日5 月25 日にネパールで大きな地震がありました。私たちが支援を続けて いるカトマンズの孤児院「Laliguras Children’s Home」も、孤児院の子供 達にけが等の被害はなかったものの、建物等が損傷し、近隣に住む人々も 様々な被害を受けました。今年は、例年寄付を送っているジンバブエのエイ ズ孤児支援NPO「Zienzele Foundation」に加え、この孤児院に、できるだ け多くの寄付金を届けられればと思っています。
Quake Damage in Navakot
「スポンサーウォーク」は日本ではあまり聞き慣れないイベントですが、欧 米では一般的によく行われているチャリティイベントの形式です。参加者 （「ウォーカー」）は、自分が目的を達成する（今回は10km 歩くこと）の を支援してくれる「スポンサー」をできるだけ多く募ります。「スポンサー」 は、「ウォーカーが目的を達成したらスポンサー料を支払う」ことをウォー カーに約束し、支援金額はスポンサーが決めます。イベント後、ウォーカー は自分のスポンサー全員から支援金を集め、それが寄付金となります。 2 005 年に行われた第1 回「ウォーク」では、参加者は19 人。少人数なが らも約50 万円が集まりました。そして、毎年、参加者数、スポンサー数、 寄付金ともに増え続け、昨年は参加者56 名、スポンサーのべ741 人、集ま った額は、1,221,200 円になりました。 これまでの寄付金は、主に、ジンバブエでは子供たちが学校に通うための費 用、ネパールの孤児院では学費、生活費に使われてきました。特に2006 年 度はスポンサーウォークと秋に行ったチャリティコンサートで集まった金額 を合わせ、ジンバブエでフィールドワークを行うためのミニバス購入費用を 贈ることができました。(2011 年にも、もう一台購入) 昨年は、この2 団 体に加え、ラオスの妊婦とインドの子供達を支援する団体、カンボジアで行 われている二つのプロジェクト、ネパールの村の図書館プロジェクトにも寄 付をしました。 このスポンサーウォークは、基本的に友人どうしが声をかけあって行う小規 模のイベントです。そのため、宣伝費や運営費はなく、寄付金は、送金費用 を差し引いた全ての金額が振り込まれます。こんな小さなイベントですが、 皆様のご支援で、途上国で暮らす多くの子供たちやその家族の暮らしを変え ることは可能です。 生まれや育ちがどこであっても、安全で快適な 生活を送る人としての権利は世界中の誰もが持っているはずです。ぜひ、ご 協力をお願いします！
2015 Kamogawa 10km Sponsored Walk Date: May 31st, 2015 (Sunday) Course: Approx. 10 km (Sanjo to Kitayama and back to Sanjo on the banks of the Kamogawa) The “Kamogawa 10km Sponsored Walk” started in 2005, making this the 11th year of this event. Following on from last year, we will hold the “Walk” in support of the “Zienzele Foundation”, an NPO that supports AIDS orphans in Zimbabwe, however, given the terrible news from Nepal on May 25th we will now be sending a great deal of the money to help our friends at the Laliguras Children’s Home repair their damaged building and lives and also help their neighbours. In Japan, sponsored events are not as common as they are in western countries. For those who are not very familiar with the method, here is a quick explanation. A walker collects “sponsors” (as many as possible) who are willing to support him/herself to achieve the target (walking 10km for this event). The “sponsors” then pledge to “pay sponsor money to the walker in order to achieve the target.” (amount is decided on by each sponsor.) After the event, the walker collects the money from all his/her sponsors, and hands it in. On the first “Walk” in 2005, there were 19 walkers and they raised over 500,000 yen. Since then, the number of walkers and the amount of money raised has increased.
In Kathmandu
Last year, there were 56 walkers and they raised an amazing 1,221, 200 yen from 741 sponsors. Nearly all the money we have raised so far has been used for educational fees for the children in Zimbabwe and the educational and living costs for the children in the Laliguras Children’s Home, Nepal. In 2006, we combined the “Walk” money and the money raised from a charity concert in the autumn, and donated the money to the Zienzele Foundation in Zimbabwe to purchase a mini bus to be used in their fieldwork efforts. Last year we donated an extra 300,000 yen to help pregnant women in Laos and Indian school children, and also gave money to two projects in Cambodia and a village school library project in Nepal.
This sponsored walk is a small event that is organized around a group of friends. Therefore, there are no expenses incurred for promotion or operating costs, and all the money raised (except for sending fees) will be donated directly to the supported organizations. With your help, we hope to help as many children and their families as possible in the developing world achieve a better standard of life, now and for the future. We are all brothers and sisters in this world, and we all deserve the same quality of life regardless of where we were born and who we are.
Organizer: Kevin Ramsden
Nuwakot before the Earthquake
Vegetable Life エドワード・ウェストンに敬意を表して
I took this earlier this week at Chuck Kayser’s organic farm, O.K.Fields in Kutsuki, Shiga. Memories of Edward Weston! These are destined for the Tomato sauce at Cafe Foodelica. これから美味しいオーガニックトマトソースになります！
Deep Kyoto Walks E-book Now Available on Amazon, with Ramblings by Yours Truly in “Gods, Monks, Secrets, Fish”
Edited by Michael Lambe and Ted Taylor, it’s a great collection of meditative strolls by long-term residents of Kyoto, and all-round cool people. And me. It sez ‘ere: “Deep Kyoto: Walks is a new anthology of 18 meditative strolls in Japan’s ancient cultural capital. Independently produced by 16 writers who have made their home in Kyoto, this book is both a tribute to life in the city of “Purple Hills and Crystal Streams”, and a testament to the art of contemplative city walking. In a series of rambles that express each writer’s intimate relationship with the city, they take you not only to the most famous shrines and temples, but also to those backstreets of memory where personal history and the greater story of the city intersect. Join Pico Iyer, Judith Clancy, Chris Rowthorn, John Dougill, Robert Yellin, John Ashburne and more as they explore markets and mountains, bars and gardens, palaces and pagodas and show us Kyoto afresh through the eyes of those who call it “home”.
![dogen[1]_0](https://johnashburne.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/dogen1_0.jpg)
My walk, entitled “Gods, Monks, Secrets, Fish” starts at the place where this fellow, Zen-Patriarch and proto-Foodie Dogen, (pictured left) ‘left the building’, and finishes at the sacred well in Nishiki Tenmangu. En route I stop off for some fine seafood at Daiyasu, and sample some of the great foodstuffs that are available in the Nishiki Market Arcade. At some point I go on seemingly unconnected asides about the French, the Vikings, Locusts, etc. If you’d like a wee taster, please pardon the pun, Michael has kindly put up this link on his Deep Kyoto website. The full kit and caboodle can be purchased for a very reasonable fee at that well-known purveyor of words named after a large rainforest, here. And here, for you patient readers who kindly got this far, is a bit of Dogen that didn’t make it into my walk:
“Through one word, or seven words, or three times five, even if you investigate thoroughly myriad forms, nothing can be depended upon. Night advances, the moon glows and falls into the ocean. The black dragon jewel you have been searching for, is everywhere”
My Photos Go Global! 初めて三大陸で同時に僕の写真が展示されています!
This week – it’s May 7th, 2014 today – has been a good one, photographically speaking. My photos, see below, are simultaneously hanging on walls on three continents, a first for me. I am also getting paid a decent amount of money. Feels great! 写真家の僕にとっては嬉しい一週間となりました。
現在、初めて三大陸で同時に僕の写真が展示されています。（京都／KG+@Cafe Foodelica、ロンドン／ユニリーヴァコーポレーション、サンタフェ／旧総監邸ニューメキシコ歴史博物館）These images are from top left , clockwise: ‘Beautiful Woman, Jaipur, India‘, currently licensed to the Unilever Corporation and blown up large at their in-house event in London; ‘War Zone’, part of the Hibiku 響 group exhibition/KG+ at Cafe Foodelica, Kyoto; and ‘Birthing Stonehenge’, a pinhole anamorphic image on show in the ‘Poetics of Light’ and in the permanent collection of the New Mexico History Museum Palace of the Governors, Santa Fe. I am doubly happy that the images are not only reaching a wide audience, but also represent three very different areas of my photographic work. I have shown once before in Buenos Aires, so I guest next stop: Tuvalu!
女子アルバイト募集 京都市左京区修学院 European-style Cafe seeking オープン・スタッフ
Interested yourself? Know someone who might be? Get in touch. Interviews will be scheduled soon.
“Quintessential Kyoto”: A Story I Wrote on Kyoto’s Michelin-starred Restaurants and the Like for Destinasian Magazine
I was very happy with this one which appears in the current (October/November) print issue, as I took all the photos (bar the Kyoto graphic) as well as doing the text.
Click here to see the full story in PDF format: Kyoto (1) including pics.
The story introduces celebrity chefs Kunio Tokuoka of Kitcho and Yoshihiro Murata of Kikunoi and I also recommend some favourite restaurants chosen by the ‘restaurant reviewer of the Louis Vuitton Kyoto Nara City Guide’. That’s me, btw. If you can’t be bothered with all those troublesome photos (my art!) here is a link to the Destinasian web version. Hope you like it.
Honenin (after Hockney)
Imitation being the sincerest form of flattery and all that. Hockney was a Bradford lad too, don’t you know. This was intended as part of a series of temple images where I play with perspective in an attempt to get that Zazen meditation feel. The series currently stands at… two.
The Travelling Gourmet: Story on Kyoto’s Foodie Hotspots
Recognise this fellow? I had to smile at the ‘talent’ reference, given the Japanese image of a ‘tarento’: young, shallow, fame-seeking, disposable, often (but not exclusively) female media fodder. A Yorkshire version sounds particularly scary. Hopefully I don’t fit those categories. I certainly don’t fit the first one.
This is my profile in the current issue of Australian Gourmet Traveller. You can find my article on page 190 of the print magazine, should you care for a read or, if you prefer, you can check it out on the Web here. Sasha gets in on the act too, as the editors chose her pic, wolfing down Kyohei Ramen, to accompany the Web version. You can see that at her Foodelica blogsite here. The other photos there, from the magazine version, are also by me, FYI.
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The Doomed Rooster Diaries: PKNK2
This was my presentation for the Pecha Kucha Night Kyoto Vol 2, held at Urban Guild here in Kyoto on the evening of January 16th, 2011. It was pretty well received I think. The PKN format is to speak about 20 images for 20 seconds each. Here are the 20 ‘slides’ of my Power Point presentation. Sans my pithy commentary (fortunately?). Please feel free to comment. Please note there is a Pecha Kucha Night INSPIRE JAPAN benefit for the Earthquake and Tsunami victims, in Kyoto, Saturday April 16th, details are here, and elsewhere globally, details here
The Finest Tofu いいお豆腐、さすが京都
松籟庵の外観 Shoraian is a beautiful old tofu restaurant set in woodland in Arashiyama, Kyoto, overlooking the Oigawa River.
There’s tofu, then there’s tofu. Once you’ve sampled the good stuff, all else pales. Kyoto is bean curd central. In particular Sagano-Arashiyama in the West of the city, and the Nanzenji temple district in the East are famed. I live a short walk from Nanzenji, but the tofu here I sampled at Shoraian, one of my favourite Kyoto restaurants.
揚げ出し豆腐＠松籟庵、嵐山
あわび豆腐＠松籟庵 This is tofu with abalone or awabidofu. Of late abalone is becoming one of my preferred tastes. Not sure why. Perhaps it is thanks to this dish, which was superb.
Pickles and Shellfish in Kyoto’s Nishiki Market 錦市場の漬け物、貝類
秋なす Eggplants aka Nasu were probably the first blue-purple things I ever ate. They are best in the autumn in Japan. A famed Japanese adage says you should never give the best ones to your wife in case she becomes too accustomed to the finer things in life. Personally I would be more than happy to give Sasha the best eggplants.
帆立 Scallops or Hotategai, a favourite of mine. Ate them once up in Aomori Prefecture in a very rough and rustic bowl of Ramen. Looked ropey, tasted fantastic. The place was called Shirakaba Ramen, the Silver Birch noodle shop, if you ever find yourself hungry on the windswept Western coast of the Shimokita Hanto peninsula.
黄瓜のつけもの Pickled cucumbers. With a little togarashi pepper to add some bite to the crunch.
カキ Oysters, first eaten in Japan aboard boats on the river that runs through Hiroshima, so they say. Hiroshima is still famed for them, as is Kumihama in Northern Kyoto prefecture. Best in winter. An old friend of mine, Yoshito, runs a Sake brewery in Kumihama, and I remember a great outdoor party he threw many years ago when he ordered a huge consignment of fresh oysters from his fisherman friend, which he steamed in sake sakamushi-style in a giant cauldron.
たくあんずけ Pickled daikon radish, or Takuanzuke. This is home-pickled, and that colour is natural. Not many japanese people know it, but Takuan isnamed after a monk of the same name who lived in the Takagamine district of North-west Kyoto.
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