I haven't produced a blog entry for while, but having read the title of this one, I know exactly what you're thinking......
It's coming up to Christmas shortly and he's been at those bloody mince pies laced with quantities of dubious alcohol as a forerunner to sitting down in front of the telly to enjoy Steve McQueen on his (Triumph) motorcycle attempting to jump over barbed wire fences.
Close, but no cigar!
Although I'm looking forward to the Christmas films (I'm a sucker for Miracle on 34th St as well) this is actually about Japan, where I've just been for approximately the last month or so. I'm not going to blather on as there's a vast amount on t'interweb about the country and I've also produced an account of our adventures in 2012 (covering several blog entries)
However, there's e thing that’s worthy of a blog entry, a souvenir purchased in Kyoto, which happened to be a pair of fittings (a 'kashira' and 'fuchi') from an ancient sword, possibly made the mid-Edo period, so maybe around 1750. Both of these beautiful, matched little fittings formed part of the complex handle on a katana and had been, over the centuries, never more than 200mm or so from one another.
Having travelled half way round the world, the fittings arrived safely in the UK but on Sunday last (8th Dec) I took the kashira out to the 'shop and being a complete and utter numpty, I tripped on the garden steps and the little iron pommel, inlaid with gold, spun off into the undergrowth!
The next three hours was spent, in freezing, windy conditions, on my hands and knees doing a finger search through the grass and flower beds but despite my best efforts, it was nowhere to be found and I was, as you can imagine, fairly pi$$ed off!
It had disappeared; gone (or so it seemed) forever.
I looked again in the evening before dark fell, but there was still absolutely no sign of it, so I gave up, decided it was lost and sensibly had a beer.
The next day, I went out to the 'shop, up the same steps and happened to glance down....
....and there, where my finger is pointing at that rock, was the kashira, face side up with the gold glinting in the sunshine!
'Gobsmacked' is an accurate description of how I felt at that precise moment, because I know, absolutely, that it wasn't there the previous day as I'd swept that ground with my fingertips at least six times on Sunday.
How to explain it? There are strange tales and legends that surround Japanese swords but perhaps the little kashira has a Shinto 'kami' and decided that having successfully made 'The Great Escape' from my clutches, a freezing cold night in an English garden was much less preferable to being right next to his mate in a nice warm display cabinet:
....so 'please, pretty please, could you find me, pick me up and put me next to my pal?'
Maybe it was even the spirit of the blade's long dead samurai owner who knew exactly where it was and moved it during the night so I could find it the next day? There is though, a far more plausible explanation and that is that my 'furry friends' have been up to their old tricks.
I rest my case m'lud.
2 comments:
Dear Blokeblog, we have another theory about your kashira...it may be a yokai!!! It escaped, carefully hid itself in the undergrowth, then shape changed after dark to wreak havoc in your neighbourhood 😱!! Obviously it was unprepared for the new surroundings and gave itself up after one night. A warning though, keep it well locked away...😬ðŸ¤.
The only strange thing that seems to have happened is that the neighbour's inflatable Christmas snowman seems to deflate overnight, which is weird. That said, I talk nicely to the kashira each morning and he'll probably have a mince pie and a wee dram of the malt on Christmas Eve which I fully expect to have disappeared on Christmas morning......
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