Other title of this blog post:

My cousin comes to visit! 

But no matter how I thought about it, all I wanted to share were cute photos of the animals. After all, I’ve already written about Nokonoshima and the owl cafe many times (links lead to search results) and there are only so many times I can review the place within the span of two and a half years.

The only thing that was different about these trips was that I finally got my iPhone with me. Do you know how great it is to not have to bring my DSLR anywhere? I know there are nice Android phone cameras out there, but my last phone was not one of those. So this post will be a first for me. All the photos and videos are going to be from my iPhone.

First up, the owl cafe:

Is this not the cutest thing ever?

Apparently, we were treated to a rare sight. These two owls are good friends (despite being different breeds), and they were grooming one another. Look at the contentment on the smaller owl’s face! Soooo cute!

This one isn’t impressed though.

I’m not too sure how many times I’ve been to the shop, but I’m never going to get tired of these owls (then again, I’m not responsible for their upkeep so…)

One nice thing about using a smartphone to take pictures is that people can actually take the pictures for you. For some reason, a lot of people here don’t know how to use my DSLR :/

Ok, so not all the photos will be about animals. This one is the Halloween donuts from Krispy Kreme! For some reason, I waited until the last day to go and get them. But, they were good!

Berry and um, the normal custard-chocolate donut, but with a spider’s web drawn on it.

The next day, we went to Nokonoshima Island. It was raining when we set out, but thankfully it wasn’t raining at Nokonoshima!

Cosmos flower still in bloom.

Luckily for us, the late blooming Cosmos flowers were really beautiful! It’s a pity we couldn’t see the sunset, but the different flowers were so pretty!

Not sure what this is, but I love how it has so many colours!

 And of course, a panorama photo just because I can.

And as you may have noticed, there were rain clouds over us the whole time. It made for some pretty dramatic pictures. Personally, I don’t really care as long as it doesn’t rain on us.

Unlike the previous time, the rabbit enclosure has been changed to let you actually pet the rabbits while you feed them! It’s so much better than dropping the food down and watching the rabbits get them (or ignore you, if they wish).

And what we realised about the abbits there is that their affection is for hire. As long as we had food, they’d keep coming, and even let us pet them, but once the food is gone, bye bye!

My cousin introduced me to the slow-motion video function on the iPhone, and we found that it made the rabbit videos really amusing. I managed to upload it to Youtube, so here’s a playlist of all six videos! (Each video is really short, the longest is 30something seconds, and most are about 10 seconds).

This is why you should travel with a designer. Art anywhere!

This shop is near the sweet shop and the cafe and the udon shop (it’s on that lane!) and since all the shops are supposedly connected to each other via a parent company, if there’s no one there, all you need to do is pop your head in somewhere and tell the staff you wish to paint.

Unfortunately, you’ll need an address in Japan to be able to paint. They’ll cast (glaze?) the plate and mail it to you later, so this is definitely not a last-minute activity. My cousin had the plate sent to me, where it will stand in a place of honour (near the ground, because there’s no way I’m going to risk having it broken).

Artist at work.

The end result is a really beautiful plate! Love the nature theme! If you like the style, you should totally check out my cousin’s site: Ellustrate. She uploads quite a lot of her work there.

Such a fun trip! I’m really glad my cousin took all the trouble (and trust me, a lot of trouble was taken) just to visit. Love you so much!

P.s. I’m doing NaNoWriMo this month, so if you care to follow my posts, you can read them here. I’m no longer posting my updates to this blog because this is really more for Japan-related stuff.