Sunday, 6 May 2006

Today our plan was to take a picnic lunch and go to Gunma-no-mori park and lie in the sun and read our books. It was an excellent plan but nearly fell to bits when we realised that we didn't have a picnic rug. You'd think that an emergency visit to Cainz would easily remedy the problem but it was not to be. They didn't have picnic rugs. In fact, people in Japan don't generally use picnic rugs - they use leisure mats. A leisure mat is essentially just a small plastic tarp printed with snazzy pictures or cartoon characters. So in order to try to assimilate, we duly purchased a leisure mat. A Poo and Coo leisure mat to be precise.

Here's Poo and Coo.

And here's us lying on said Poo and Coo leisure mat.

We had a great day. We ate cake and got stared at by everyone. Small children dared each other to run up and look at the crazy foreigners.