神戸: Kobe

The sakura have mostly been gone for a few weeks now. No more hanami, but at least everything here has started turning green. Now, it's high time I shared some of the pictures from my excursion into the Kobe area nearly a month ago.

Having 2 weeks of free time but not much cash, I decided to keep the traveling simple by visiting a friend in Kobe and wandering around the Kansai region (the area just south of Fukui that includes Kyoto, Osaka, Nara and Kobe) for as long as the 4-day Kansai train pass would allow me to wander.Here we see the lovely port city of Kobe from above. I really liked Kobe. It offers easy access to both mountains and coastline as well as all the commodities of a major metropolitan hub.
Among the most essential commodities, of course, is Bubble Tea - the Taiwanese tapioca pearl tea sensation that is a favorite drink in China Towns the world over. You can't see it in this picture, but my friend and I bought matching Kung Fu shirts here. That same night we also watched the Stephen Chow classic Shaolin Soccer.
Not only does Kobe offer mountains, a port and bubble tea but also some of the finest creepy modern art this side of Dali's twisted time piece.
The best part of Kobe, naturally, was the colorful restrainless chair lift that takes sightseers up and down the mountain overlooking the city. Sure, the seats never rise more than a couple meters off the ground, but, still, in the States this sort of ride is a lawsuit in waiting.

That's my friend taking a picture of me in the picture. Someday, I think I may create a photobook of pictures of people taking pictures.
Some background on the friend: a few years ago we both lived in the same city outside Nagoya while exchange students at Nanzan University. Since we lived in the same city we also rode the same train to school. We even ended up testing into the same Japanese courses. He was really the first friend I made in Japan outside of my host family. Although he grew up on a dairy farm in upstate New York (not the city) - a part of the world I've never seen, "Battisti" and I managed to connect through a mutual interest in the Japanese language and a love for all things Stryper.

For the sake of personal embarrassment, I shall provide links here to a couple of pictures from my old Nagoya blog: A B