Slight digression

Will put up more pics of my awesome holiday soon, but I just got back from a quick jaunt around Hagi port with my camera.  We have had snow everyday for the past few days and the wind was screaming in off the water, so my hands are frozen and my cheeks are burnt, but I had fun playing around with my camera. 
83 photos later, there is only one that I like.  How depressing is that?  Anyway, here it is:

Best Holiday Ever. Day two. Night time.

I met up with Rachel and James and we headed out to Harbourland for dinner and fun.

Lots of lights and stuff.  Pretty. 

There is a small amusement park at Harbourland.  We had a race on motorised animals.  I may have rammed Rachel and cut James off.  Totally worth it, though. 

Waiting for the ferris wheel.  It was cold!

I don't have any photos of me riding the Thomas the Tank Engine kiddie ride because I still reckon that was engineered by the others.  See, we had agreed that the loser of rock, paper, scissors would have to ride a kiddie ride and on the first round Rachel and James kicked my butt!  Let's just say the photos have a decidedly grumpy Flick in them.

We had dinner at an Italian place and ended up chatting to one of the chefs - an Italian guy who had lived in Japan for 17 years.  Then we wandered into town and found a cool little bar for a few drinks and some nachos.  The perfect ending to the day.

Best Holiday Ever. Day two. Daytime

So Rachel and James headed off to Himeji for the day, which gave me time to do some shopping (more on that later) and then make my way to a bird park, which I had found online completely by chance and wasn't really sure what to expect.  It was well worth it.  Here are just a few of the tonnes of pictures I took:

Birds!  The green ones started to comb my hair with their beaks.  You could hold them and feed all the birds in the aviary.

Yes, that is a toucan on my arm.  That beak was scary!

 I timed it perfectly for a small bird show I didn't know was happening.



 This guy was part of the show.  He kept buzzing us.  It was awesome!

 I got to hold an owl!  It was big, too.

 The feathers on this little guy were unbelievably soft.

The photo before this he looks absolutely adorable, but then he gave me the stink eye.  Much better.

There was a pool of medicinal fish.  For 100 yen you got a small towel and as long as you wanted to have your feet or hands nibbled on by these tiny fish.  It tickled like mad!  Got rid of all the dead skin, though.  It was strange to be doing this in a warm glass house while the snow poured down outside. 

The lobby and restaurant area and shopping areas were all in these massive glass houses with hanging flowers and pools with lillies in to eat around.  I totally lucked out on this find.  Recommend it to anyone who is heading to Kobe!