Way too much time on my mind...

In a desperate attempt to get out of writing the pile of thank you letters I owe people from Christmas, I decided it was high time I embarked on a project to catalogue my Hello Kitty collection so that I could share it with people. Unfortunately for everyone, I ended up taking about 60 pictures of all my Kitty stuff. I can't imagine that anyone reading this doesn't know who Hello Kitty is, but in case I forgot someone, Hello Kitty is a Japanese character produced by a company called Sanrio, she was 30 years old last year and has her own house in a mini theme park called SanrioPuroland on the other side of Tokyo.
This first group is a selection of Hello Kitties from Tokyo and reasonably near.

This one is from Asakusa where I used to work, she's dressesd as an Oilan, so my Japanese teacher told me, which is a High Class Courtesan from the Edo Period... I'm not quite sure how appropriate that is, for a company which largely targets children, but she is pretty.

This is Odaiba Kitty. Odaiba is on Tokyo Bay (Possibly. Somewhere with water anyway) probably the only place in the world with a miniature Statue of Liberty on the Waterfront.

Mel and Cat bought me this hermit crab version from Shonan, after I fell in love with the soft toy version but decided not to buy it. If I remember correctly, it was a "cheer-up" present after they went to Yokohama on a stunning day and I had to stay home in bed because my dodgy foot.

The purple kimono clad Kitty is from Kamakura, home of the giant Buddha, also famous for Hydrangeas, hence the purple, and may well be the very first Kitty pen I bought myself when I arrived in Japan.

Next we have a selection of Kitties from the Kansai region.

This is my original Kyoto Kitty, I bought this the first time I went to Kyoto in 2003.

On the left we have Murasaki Kitty- (remember the author of Genji?!).

Here we have another Genji Kitty, neither Yuko nor Kuniko could quite work out who she is supposed to be; possibly one of the princes... or a character from the other piece of Literature of the time; The Tale of the Heike-(equally as dull as Genji.)

This one might actually be Genji himself, although why Kitty has suddenly turned into a cross-dresser, I do not know!

This Kitty is from a famous fairy tale about a girl child sent to an ancient childless couple in some bamboo... somewhat like the Russian story of the Snow Maiden.

Another legend from Kyoto or its surroundings but no one could decide which one, I just thought it was cute.

Golden Pavilion Kitty, lovely garden although I must say that the Pavilion lost its impact after the first time I saw it. The second time I went, I much preferred the so-called Silver Pavilion which is not actually silver at all.

Kitty dressed up as one of the "evil, ravenous deer"

How could I possibly resist the "Giant Buddha" version, although I must be truthful and say that as I picked these two out and went to pay for them, Mrs. Okamoto grabbed them from me and refused to let me buy them for myself, there really wasn't much I could do except to say thank you very much!

Himeji Kitty, bought on my little trip last year when we arrived to find that contrary to the website's information, the Castle was in fact, closed for the holidays, leaving us with nothing to do except visit the Kaiyuukan in Osaka where I bought the one on the Jellyfish. This year's model is sat atop the Whale Shark, I thought I was showing great self-restraint by not actually buying that one as well.

Moving on to the collection I acquired on my trip to Shikoku island last Summer with Satoko, who thought I was absolutely insane.
Shikoku Island is famous, among other things, for having these 88 temples around which this really famous bloke did a pilgrimage on foot. Well, we saw 13 by car over three days and by the end of it, I was exhausted and never wanted to see a temple again. I simply cannot imagine doing it on foot! So this is Pilgrim Kitty, you can't really see it unfortunately, but she is actually wearing a little straw hat on the back of her head.

Shikoku is also famous for the Tokushima Obon dance festival and the Kitty on the right is having fun having a try at that!

Shoudoshima, a little island between Shikoku and Honshu, is famous for a film called 24 pupils which is a war story about a teacher and her students; this is Kitty dressed as the teacher.

Shoudoshima is also majorly famous for olives, although having got lost trying to find the olive park, the closest we got to any olives was some gross olive flavoured chocolate in a souvenir shop.

Here on the left, we have Naruto Wakame Kitty. The Naruto area of Shikoku is famous for a paticular kind of seaweed, called wakame. It's almost too cute.

Anyway, that's all I have time to mess about with for now, next time I blog, I will begin with Hokkaido and Okinawa Kitties and see how we do from there!! Enjoy...