B is for... Blanka and Batman Blissfully Bicycling through Beautiful Blossoms

Here is today's picture in the A-Z of Awesome Japan!

• Blanka is a character from Capcom's popular videogame fighting series Street Fighter.
  
• Batman is a masked vigilante crimefighter character created by Bob Kane and published by DC Comics. In 1966, he was the star of a series of manga produced by Jiro Kuwata to tie in with the launch of the Adam West Batman TV series. You can read more about that here. And also here.
  

Today's picture was a combination of a couple of suggestions from KDBryan on twitter. Only I threw in Batman. Because I wanted to draw Batman. I hope KDBryan does not have a problem with this.

(I think Batman is my yardstick for including western characters in this A-Z; where a character has appeared in a Japanese-orginated version, where they are are sufficiently popular in Japan or generally seem to be part of the Japanese pop-cultural universe, then they are fair game for inclusion. I realise this is not very precise, and I am by no means an authority on these things, but it seems like a good rule of thumb to me.)

'C's picture coming on Monday! If you would like to suggest a topic for future letters, you can do so via Facebook, Twitter, or right here in the comments on this blog. And you can of course sponsor me at my JustGiving page - all proceeds to the Japan Earthquake & Tsunami Relief Fund.