On the road to Kyoto

Today is a public holiday in Japan and there’s a lot of congestion on the road going south. Also, there is construction work on the motorway which has added to our delay. Arne and Carlos gave an interesting talk on the bus about their careers as knitting designers, which led to enormous popularity in Japan. Their tours for 2024, including the Norwegian coastal cruises and one tour of English gardens (including King Charles’s place at Highgrove) are already fully booked.

The other people on this tour are really expert knitters and at this moment, most of them are sitting knitting socks on four needles but really complicated designs. I must be the only one not knitting because I’m looking at the scenery or just thinking or writing. There is also a lot of discussion going on about the best yarn stores, various patterns that people are using and the interesting stitches that I’ve never heard of. I must learn more.

On reaching the city of Hikone, there were huge crowds in the street. People were watching a parade since this is a public holiday for cultural reasons. The bus found it very difficult to find a park and we had to walk a long way to the gardens we were supposed to visit. There was no time to do a tour of the gardens as it would have made us too far behind schedule. However, we all found the parade itself very interesting. Photos on my Instagram. See: butterworth.marg