We have a lot of good cabbages coming along just now so we decide to have a cabbage pancake, our version of okonomiyaki from Japan. We slice the rest up finely into a cabbage salad with sesame and shiso dressing.

We follow this delight from our garden with sushi in Tokyo.

Followed by a full Japanese delightful mixed meal in Kyoto.

We spend a day walking the temples of Kyoto. We re-visit our favourites, because they make us feel somehow centred and located in a place that we know as familiar, but also because a half hour spent sitting quietly there is very relaxing and grounding. There are temples here dedicated to anything and everything. There are temples featuring gold, silver – or the lack of it, rock, gravel, bamboo, water, moss. You name it there is a temple or shrine here dedicated to it.

Gold in water, Gold in spring, Gold in winter, Gold inside and out.

We spend a couple of days visiting a lot of them. It’s so good to revel in the non-acquisitive nature of buddhism.

There is an ancient tree in a shrine by the side of the road. It is very old and needs a little bit of health-care. There are a team of workers and flying arborists, trimming, lopping and preserving what can’t be lopped. It will give this old tree a new lease of life.

I’m so pleased to be back in Japan.