I’m so behind on my blogging, thanks to two trips and a nasty illness. Let’s go back a few weeks when I went to London for a mostly-business trip.
As soon as I arrived, I walked over to the Foreign & Commonwealth Office as I was offered a tour of the building by my friend Diplomatic Diva. It’s not a building the public generally gets access to so it was very cool to see behind the scenes of the government. It’s an amazing building with a lot of history.
More importantly, I got to meet the cats! This is Larry, whose official title is Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office. I also met the Chief Mouser to the Foreign Office. They are definitely my favourite members of the British government at the moment.
I also got a peek at 10 Downing Street, though there wasn’t much going on on a Friday afternoon.
After that, we had a mini UK li.st meetup at Somerset House which involved fish and chips and this incredibly rich peanut butter marquise.
On Saturday, we went to Kew Gardens and I’ll blog about that separately. Sunday was the main event – Hyper Japan! We got VIP passes instead of press passes, which made us feel extra special.
It was a really fun day and I got to meet quite a few people in person that I’ve worked with at SCK for years. I also did a lot of shopping and got to meet DJ DOMO. There’s more about all that at Super Cute Kawaii.
On Monday, I managed quick stops at the ARTBOX shop and JapanCentre plus a whizz round the Hokusai exhibition at the British Museum. I’ve loved his work for a long time, plus there have been some great documentaries on BBC4 recently, so it was great to see the prints in person.
I stayed at the hub by Premier Inn which was incredibly convenient, right next to Trafalgar Square and Leicester Square. It’s also very affordable for the location and one of the nicest budget hotels I’ve ever stayed in. I’ll be back for sure.
