Kobe

FOR day three in Osaka we went to Kobe! I saw a bit of already it on the train trip to Himeji and it looked really clean and airy. We left in the morning and we got there around 11 am. It was so nice! It has a small town feel with a many good sized areas. |The closest I could think of was how some areas of Vancouver feel like. We first visited the shopping area near Sannomiya station where we got off. There are many small streets but also big streets and lots of interesting little stores. Then we visited the European area. We walked around and up and down the hill quite a bit but it was very quaint. I also saw the coolest Starbucks ever! It was in an old Victorian house and it was very nice and fit in with the area.
We had lunch at a small homemade Italian restaurant. The food was expensive and the pasta was not great, though Jen said the pizza as pretty good.
We then went to Chinatown, it looked very Chinese-ish and had lots of my favourite Chinese sweet, sesame balls! It was pretty small but there were a lot of people lining up to go to a restaurant there.
We moved on to the harbor and when we got there we saw the end of a festival! It was happening in front of the marine museum. There were many interesting boats on display, people selling stuff, flea market items, and lots of food vendors. I tried Tacoyaki and I found out it tastes a lot like Okonomiyaki, except without the noodles and the batter is rolled into a ball with a bit of octopus in the middle. I thought it was pretty tasty. We looked around a bit more then moved on to the stores in the harbor area. I ended up having a Big Mac for supper since we were too late to go to a local place to eat.
We got back and went to sleep early, checkout was at 9am the next morning!

First days

Map of the Area


I finally got to Yokohama and met up with my girlfriend, it was great! :) I got there so late though that I was unable to check into my reserved room at Hostel Yokohama. So I went next door and stayed one night at the Hotel Porto Yokohama first. I must say the rooms are small but comfy in these Hostel/Hotels. However you only have a room, shower, bathroom and all else is shared by floor. I woke up in the morning and wanted to take a shower, so I grabbed my clothes and soaps and went into the shower, only to discover you have to insert ¥100 (about $1US) for every 2 minutes of shower water. So I ran back, grabbed a handfull of coins and took a nice long (and expensive) shower. :)

I wandered around Yokohama, checking out the shops, restaurants and getting used to the sounds of the language and the way people act. The Room at the Guest house in which I'm staying in Yokosuka wasn't available till August 1st so I had to kill 2 days in Yokohama, it was pretty easy to do!

I visited a lot of Chinatown in Yokohama, it was pretty amazing, and the funny thing was there were tons of Chinese tourists in Japan visiting Chinatown!

While I was there I saw this local Koban. See how small it is? Most of them are this size, holding only one or two officers.

I bought a pair of plastic nunchakus while I was in Chinatown and my girlfriend bought a cute Panda pillow. Panda stuff is everywhere! It's Panda-monium! (hahaha) It also happened to be the day before the 150th celebration of Yokohama city.

I took off and split the nunchaku's rubber outside in half and tapped them to the handles of one of the bags I was carrying, now I was able to turn it into a backpack (sort of).