Hotel Suave Kobe Asuta

Hello, Tom again.<br><br>So having arrived late at night in Shanghai we attempted to guess our way to our chosen hostel from the vague directions they`d given us. Our first impressions were that it was a lot more manic than Beijing had been - thousands of motorbikes (which apparently dont stop for any red light!) threaten to knock you over at every junction and there is a constant sound of drilling from the huge construction sites around the city.<br><br>It turns out that ...

Seconds please. I had to go back to Osaka, one way or another (my return flight was leaving from here). Ate just as well if not better than the first go around. Went to the Takoyaki museum at Universal city walk but it was more tako vendors than museum, not such a bad thing. Had simply amazing Kobe ...

... aloof tiger-striped cat with black stripes on an off-white background. He looked quite exotic. Rowan tried to pay him on our way out, but this neko was having none of it - collecting money was for the hired help!<br><br>After getting our fill of cat lovin', we moseyed out to explore more of Den Den Town...<br><br>-----<br>OKONOMIYAKI!:<b r><br>Much of the fun of Japan was sampling the local and national cuisine. Okonomiyaki is a popular dish with many regional ...

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... from the U.S., India, Geneva, China and Japan. Diversity is us! We heard presentations from a couple of our agency partners on what is PR and on the power of imagery. We saw some really cool examples of campaigns, mostly business to consumer, but thought provoking for me. After this we had breakout groups to talk through all of our customer touchpoints and branding opportunities. I had a great group with representatives from our executive team, China ...

... them out shopping and spending money. One short taxi ride later and we'd ended up outside a Chinese restaurant deep inside the city's European quarter. Marked by narrow, hilly roads, art deco buildings and stately homes, this area left much to be desired from its uniqueness in a country full of identikit homes and suburbs. The restaurant already had a queue outside at 11.45am for the first sitting of their dim sum course. Bank holiday ...

... handing out packets of tissues, aahhhhghgh!!! I miraculously found the post office somewhere down some street after asking several people who all pointed me in different directions. Right, good, I could cross errand number one off the list. Sniffed out a Starbucks, had a coffee and a fag and tried to get my bearings. Looked at several maps which all seemed to be different. Was I north of the station? Or had I wandered south? Who ...

Today Keiko and I went to Kobe for the day. The main aim was to see the Luminarie (see the next post) but we left at around midday to make the most of the day. As well as the obligatory shopping we also had time to stop off at two cafés to recuperate from coping with all the Christmas ...

... seemingly crime-free the entire country is - many people do not leave their bikes locked, or their doors for that matter, and they come back to find their possessions in the same place and condition they left them. We loved the sense that we could walk anywhere, day or night, without fear of harm, and we reveled in the knowledge that our "stuff" was equally safe - we had little, if any, worry of being targeted for pick pocketing or the like. It was a marvelous change from some of the ...

... so tall that it's hard to landmark anything. After stopping several people and just dying laughing because in order to explain where we want to go we inevitably end up turning our noses up to look like pigs and snorting (Pig) and whistling (Whistle) to try to get people to understand the name of the place we want to go! Yes, we are retarded, but we're having fun! With no luck, we just wander around a bit and finally decide to go into ...