Kitty and more

This weekend was full of more adventures. For anyone unfamiliar with Japanese things - one of the most famous "characters" here is "Hello Kitty". Despite being born in London she spends most of her time just down the road from us at a theme park called "Harmony Land". It is a theme park designed for reasonably small children and every year the children have a kindergarten outing there. The first year it was pretty fun, the second a little painful and the third... well what can I say! There is only so much of Hello Kitty that you can take. For anyone who is unfamiliar with this character here is the link to the official homepage... Hello Kitty!

On a much more intersting note we had more guests at the cottage last night - two Americans, one Australian and a Dutch lady. Despite a day of rain the clouds managed to go away just long enough for us to enjoy tea outside and then wander around with the fireflies and a saxaphone at night.
It just happened to be one of the guests birthdays and I had just happened to have made a cake... lucky!

The fireflies are out in full force at the moment. Magical stuff each evening. If you didn't catch up on them in last year's blog ... we have fireflies in the river just in front of us and each year they appear at about this time and light up the nights for a couple of hours as part of an elaborate mating ritual. Apparently there are at least 136 different species of fireflies and each species has a different series of flashes. Each male of a species signals in a certain way to a female, who responds with the appropriate flashing pattern. The male then moves in closer, repeating the pattern. BUT..... "In general, males will not fly down to a female that sends the wrong species signal. But, some females of differing species have evolved the ability to mimic the response flashes of species other than their own. As the male flies down to a mimicking female, he is captured and eaten, gulp!"
Just another piece of useless information for you - I hope it makes you weary of those who are flashing at you!