Blogs from Kobe, Hyogo, Japan, Asia - page 6

We arrived in Japan on August 6, the 61st anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Isn’t that ironic? We were on the ship sailing for one day in between our stay in Korea, and our arrival in Japan. That day of sailing might have been the best ever. If you look on a map, you can see all of the tiny islands around Korea and Japan. We had to sail through all of those, and it was so pretty. So we saw land the entire day basically. That day, we also passed under the Kurushima Bridge, which was pretty cool and really pretty to see. The land around it was so pretty. That night, we anchored right in the middle of the ocean, and we could see all the lights and cities of Japan. We ... read more

Hello everyone, The count down continues - 6 days until my 2 week summer vacation begins! Last weekend I head to Awajii island a huge island - I´ve been told its the same physical size as Bali or Singapore but significantly less populated, with a population of 150,000, not far from the main Honshu island where Kobe is located. I travel to Awajii once a month to teach a private lesson and have dinner with some Japanese friends who live there. This past weekend I was invited to a special bbq on the island for some highschool and college students from the area who are headed to the U.S. to do a homestay for the week. We practiced some English conversation - some students seemed pleased to try their English out on me and others looked ... read more

If you can call it a beach!... read more

I had such a good day today I wanted to write about it before too many details escape me. I recently read about some rural Japanese towns not far from Kobe which are famous for the pottery that is produced in small studios by local craftspeople. So after consulting 3 different sources and getting 3 different sets of directs I decided to visit one of the commmuities, Aino. To tell you the truth I´m not sure if the towns named Aino or just the local train station that I got off at, but nevertheless they make pottery there so I know I was in the right place. A scenic 1.5 train ride from Kobe, I found myself literally in the middlle of nowhere, with just fice fields as far as the eye could see, but I ... read more

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 ... read more