Ogenki desuka?

Well, I would not be surprised if you had all given up on me - but what's a Westie to do when She won't help??? She's so busy learning Japanese (the above being an example - it is the equivalent of 'how are you' in English although the literal translation is a bit different but well, we won't go into that - She could go on for hours about it all, She's that fascinated with the language) and that thing that we are all starting to suspect is just an excuse not to help out - Work. I've no idea what it means as I'm a dog, I'm not supposed to know what it means but all I do know is that it takes Her away for about 12 hours of the day and, over the last few weeks, has made Her very tired. However, that's ok as things are less stressful than last year and we are all having a great time in Japan. And He and I get to do great stuff every day.

So, here's an update:

1) Cherry Blossom season has come and gone and now, we are in to Spring and what an amazing difference it makes - when I first arrived, it was cold and rainy and all a bit brown from the cold Winter but now, there is green EVERYWHERE, the two parks near me are wild with green, the trees are all in leaf, the roses have started to come out and the smell of jasmine is everywhere. Of course, I could care less about the pretty smells, I rarely lift my head off the ground when I'm out walking as there are too many great smells around but She tells me that, up at Their height, it's rather amazing. Here is the view She has on the way to the train station every morning:

2) I'm getting to know my way around very much - I have taken over the suburb, to the extent I can - He and I go for long walks every day so we get to see and do some great stuff - there is some stiff competition over here in terms of the coolest four legged one - at the moment, in particular, I'm finding that the two WFT that I see most evenings are my main competition - I begrudgingly admit that they are indeed worthy of attention but my black button nose is a tad out of joint as a result. I'm working on upping the coolness and handsomeness at my end - it's tiring work - (I had to wear the sock for a few days as my paw was a bit sore - I don't like socks so as soon as they left the room, I took it off - They don't know how I managed it and I'm certainly not going to share the secret but suffice it to say, I worked out a way to get that sock off in a few minutes, every time)

3)I'm settling in well (as are They) but I do miss my buddies back in Perth and I miss the older two legged ones - I partiuclarly miss Jorge and Maxi - they were my favourite buddies back Down Under - and even though Jorge is about, oh, 100 times bigger than me, he always played really well with me - but, as of next week, I'm going to doggy day care near Tokyo, a few times a month so I can play with other four legged ones and I'm getting a Sturdibag soon so that I can go on the trains with Them on the weekends and visit loads of cool places with Them - I can't go into the shrines or temples of course, but I can walk around all the cool little places they visit - I am very excited about the trains - look how fast they are and look at all the cool places I can visit:

4) only a few minutes away from us is a river - it doesn't have the white sandy foreshore that 'my' river Down Under has but it as LOADS of grass to roll around on, a lot of other four legged ones to mess around with and it's LOADED with great smells so I can't complain - we all think it's amazing that in such a densely populated city, I can still have a river to run along and loads of space to run around - you can see me and her having a race (I won of course - She says it's because I tried to trip Her up but I say She's a bad loser - She's very much into the jogging these days, hence the brightly coloured trainers!!!)

So, all in all, the Japanese Adventure is going well - I'm a lucky four legged one to get to see so much and She says it's like living a wonderful dream - She is so grateful and says we are all very lucky. He is taking a lot of photographs (fortunately, mostly of things other than me as we all know I'm not that keen on having my photograph taken!!!!) and They are doing a lot of sight seeing -

But She SAYS (and I'm trying to believe Her this time) that She will help me out much more and promises to be a bit more proactive in Her duties, including catching up on everyone else's blogs as we really have missed you all!!

Woof for now

Groucho