july 2

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July 2

Today I spent my day exploring more of Kobe. It started off with me sleeping in. I know that I shouldn’t be sleeping in when I’m backpacking across Japan, but it was one of the few opportunities that I had. I’m also still catching up on sleep from studying abroad. Slept in, read my fiction book for a bit before getting up. I’ve only been reading my fiction book before getting up and right before going to sleep. Any other down time is spent studying out of my grammar book, but I don’t really have much down time to begin with. It’s 9:30pm now so I’ll probably study and bit, read my fiction book, and go to sleep. Tomorrow I’m headed for Okayama. In Okayama there is supposed to be a really cool garden that I’ll see. Back to today. My first stop was grabbing breakfast before catching the train into town. Around the stations, there are always some really cool restaurants. Beside this one is a this French(not really French but that have a French name and flag) bakery. I ate a roast beef sub and got this delicious bread filled with a spicy assortment of meats. After arriving in Kobe proper, I explored this famous district called Kitano. Inside of it are many old style Western building including French and Dutch architecture. After that, I hiked up about an hour or so hike up the top of the nearest mountain. Located at the top was an herb garden that I had read about. In it were many type of flowers and herbs. After taking a break and eating some peppermint(the herb) flavored ice cream, I headed back down.

An interesting note on Japanese ice cream, their ice cream tastes just like what it is supposed to taste like. There is none of this guessing as to what fruit or, in my case, what herb it is supposed to taste like. Also, they have weird flavors of ice cream like sesame seed and wasabi. Guess what… the ice cream tastes like both although they did have the curtsey to tone down the wasabi just a bit.

After that, I decided I wanted a break from touring and speaking Japanese, so I decided to go see a movie. About half the movies shown in Japanese cinemas are American movies with Japanese subtitles. So I was thinking I was in for a relaxing time surrounded entirely by English, and I was wrong. To be frank, the difficulty was in buying the ticket and figuring out what to do with it afterwards. Most Japanese cinemas don’t have more than 2 or 3 screens, so after walking to the first one and realizing that they weren’t playing Mission Impossible 3, and I had to find another one that did. Buying the ticket was easy enough, but they handed me a receipt and card with a number on it(number 11). I tried getting the two ladies behind the counter to explain to me what it was, but they refused to slow down their ridiculously fast and complicated Japanese. They finally said to return to them 30 minutes before the show was supposed to start. I had 1:30 at that point. I said fine. I went and sat down in a lobby beside the theater and ended up asking a couple next to me what the purpose of the card was. They were able to explain it to me in about 20 seconds when the two ladies behind the counter tried 2-3 minutes to explain it to me. It turned out that it was just your number for entering the actual theater. My card was number 11 so I was the eleventh to enter and choose my seat. Pretty simple if you think about it, but I had no clue at the time.

Before the movie started, I went and ate my favorite Japanese food, yakisoba. They grilled soba noodles with cabbage, meat, and sauce to produce an amazing dish. I must learn how to cook this when I get back.

The movie was great, and I enjoyed not having to think about Japanese for while at least. After the movie, I returned back to my home station, asked about the best method to get to Okayama tomorrow, and returned to the youth hostel.

I’m going to get up early tomorrow morning so I’ll have plenty of time to sightsee in Okayama. Okayama has a youth hostel, but they don’t except online reservations. Also, the directions provided by the internet and pretty poor. I should ok though. If I can’t find it, I’ll just find a cheap hotel somewhere else and stay there.

So it’s late and I want to get some reading in before bed tomorrow. I’ll post pictures when I get internet access, which may not be until Hiroshima.

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