The best way to start off the week is with an adventure!
Okay, so I actually went to class today. Japanese was traditionally difficult, and at lunch I sat tucked away in the corner of the shokudou with Yoonkyung and Hana so we could eat. I finally got to have takenoko (bamboo shoots) because Yoonkyung mixed it in with some rice she had brought to share. It was surprisingly delicious! (I don't know why things like this continue to surprise me, but they do.) When lunch ended, Yoonkyung and I went to our budou (kendo) class. Today was the last day we would be doing kendo. Next week we start naginata! The gym was exceptionally hot, even with all of the doors open. It felt like we were inside an oven, and the hakama we wore only made it worse.
Luckily, the time went by fast. I had made the decision on Sunday night to go with Yoonkyung to Kobe. The only downside was that I would have to skip my gym class. It wouldn't have been so bad if Inoue sensei wasn't the teacher. (I still feel bad for skipping his class on Friday.) Even so, Yoonkyung and I ducked past Inoue sensei's class and quickly returned to our respective dorms before meeting up at the train station. The trip to Kobe was a little expensive since it was over an hour and a half away, but still under 1,000 yen. We rode in to the city around 5:00. The first thing I noticed was the water. We were by the sea! As soon as we got off the train, Yoonkyung and I met up with her two Korean friends (and I will constantly refer to them as such because I cannot spell their names).
Our first stop was at the coolest Starbucks I have ever seen. The store itself was inside of an old colonial house that had been reconstructed, and all of the rooms upstairs had been transformed into savvy seating areas. The original house was built in 1907, but had to be torn down after a fire destroyed it. Now it's a Starbucks. There is a joke in there somewhere, but I think I'll leave it alone.
Our next stop was in the Kitano Ijinkan district, which is one of the things Kobe is famous for. It consists of foreign houses that were built in the Meiji and Taisho time periods. It was really neat to see European architecture in the middle of a Japanese city! We would have gone into some of the houses, but they all had entrance fees so we settled for looking at them from afar.
As night began to fall on Kobe, we decided that the harbor would be our next stop, which is the other thing Kobe is most famous for (not including the beef, of course). A quick subway ride took us right to the water, and I was immediately reminded of Baltimore (my favorite American city.) The view of the port was absolutely breathtaking. Actually, it was the view that made us choose to eat at an expensive restaurant for dinner. For around $35 we gained access to an all-you-could-eat seafood buffet right on the edge of the water. I think it was worth it, especially since we all left completely stuffed. The area we were in had an amazing selection of foreign restaurants and goods, which makes sense for a port town.
Dinner took up most of our time in Kobe, but we decided to walk around to see a few more of the hot spots, including Kobe's radio tower, maritime museum, and the remains of the wreckage caused by the devastating The Great Hanshin earthquake of 1995. Of course, we couldn't resist taking some purikura pictures before we left, either.
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| Inside the restaurant |
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| "Tabehoudai" = "All you can eat" |
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| Kobe radio tower |
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| Maritime museum |
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| Wreckage caused by the earthquake |
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| Purikura! |
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