Matt promised me all week that he would take me out on his walking tour of some historic and important places around Matsuyama. So, we headed out on foot from Sen for a few hours to explore. The tour was one that Matt has been recommending to several of his guests. All have apparently loved it, and I did too.
Beating all of our expectations, the first month o’ Sen was actually busy most weekends and the weekdays were all steady. The guests were all amazing (really not a bad apple in the bunch). Most countries in Europe were represented, Africa, Asia, North America (sorry central/south America), Australia and even some folks living in Antarctica (granted they were American-damn those bastards are everywhere :). Everyone was happy and gave us great feedback and reviews (both in person and on-line). Both of us feel truly blessed to have such a wonderful month and we hope it’s a sort of omen for things to come.
Yes, we’ve made it through finding a place, moving-in, cleaning up, renovating, opening and dealing with our first walking O-Henro san!! It does feel like we have accomplished soooooooo much in these 2 1/2 months. And really, the 1st week and a half of opening has given us a good taste of what life is going to be like (but hopefully a lot busier).
Yes and yes, we are officially open, and to our great surprise, we actually had 6 guests the 1st night!! And…only 2 of them were friends or family. Really feels great that we are actually doing it, that all our planning and hard work has actually spawned something. For myself, I definitely sort of lost sight of the ultimate goal while we were renovating this place; I think you almost have to though. The only way for me to make sense of anything and get things accomplished on a daily basis, was to set small tasks and goals and not think about everything that needed to get done.
After much ado, and a ton of dirt, the major renovation is now finally done; looks like a totally different place. Interesting; after 6 weeks of mere inches of progress, 3 days of big renovation and the game is totally changed. We’re now walking on beautiful wood floors, sitting under our kototsu on our new raised tatami space and sliding open our new door. Of course we aren’t finished yet, but I guess you could say the end is in sight.
I shot a video this morning of what Sen Guesthouse looks like now; walking through all of the rooms giving super interesting comments (oh yeah). Of course, the guesthouse won’t look like this when we open…just a glimpse of what it looks like now, a little of what we’ve done, and how far we still have to go.
This last week has been sort of a roller coaster ride…ups, downs, some unexpected turns and I might have a slight case of whiplash; at least I didn‘t throw up. We have made good progress though, as is evidenced by the tons of wood, sealant, screws, yukatas, old tiles and sewing machine table we have strewn about the (soon to be) cafe. You did hear me correctly, we have, as of today, 3 antique sewing machine tables (one still has a sewing machine attached to it) that we will be using as normal tables in our guesthouse.
