Nikko and Neko

I saw a really cute ad for a cat (neko) in a weekly free magazine here: it says the 6 week old kittens are bilingual. I am SO impressed. I wonder who their teacher was?

Blissfully, I've just had a three day holiday from work. April was the last time I had any consecutive days off, so this has been very very nice.

Friday I went to Nikko, which is about two hours north of Tokyo and famous for its many temples and shrines. Very nice. Pretty. Bla bla bla. And wet. It absolutely chucked it down, from the minute we got off the train. Still this kept the hoards away, so no complaints there. And it was very calm and peaceful there. The train ride was pretty cool too as we went up through the countryside, passing hundreds of rice paddies, some of which were no bigger than little family plots, and others entire fields.

Saw things like The Three Monkeys (hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil) and here's the Google images for Nikko (hey, I'm lazy, I didn't take many photos myself, and I'm not doing a big tourist sell here).

One other thing to say about Nikko, I bought a Three Monkeys Hello Kitty (everywhere has it's own Kitty Chan) which consisted of Kitty Chan dressed as a monkey with a monkey standing on her and another monkey standing on that one. What disturbed me is that Kitty Chan was the 'speak no evil' monkey.

Kitty Chan does not have a mouth. Is this a subliminal message that Kitty is an evil lying bitch?

It's kawaii all the same.

Saturday took great pleasure in doing nothing and Sunday had a lovely bbq in a local park with much too much food, lots of booze, good company and finally lots and lots and lots more rain. Oh well, it was good fun all the same, and pretty amusing realising the rest of the park had gone home because of the rain but we were still there under a couple of trees. (Oh, and we did get a few hours before the rain came so it wasn't a total wash out).