Hotel Tor Road Kobe

... br>The boat left at 11am but we had to get there early for the customs and passport control and while we going through we bumped into Jon who we`d met from the Trans-Siberian and also another Swedish couple who were on it too. There seems to be this weird group of about 20 people travelling across Asia and bumping into each other - all of them said they`d bumped into people from the Trans-Siberian randomly in Xian or Beijing or on the train or on the boat, it`s a bit ...

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 ...

... about the place. It served as a sorta home base, plus a great place to meet locals.<br><br>This time I met Atiko, Ueno, and Jo (all male).<br><br>Atiko was a 17 year old student who was happy to get to practice his English.<br><br>Ueno was a quirky fashion designer wearing a conspicuous mirror-tiled tie! Definitely a non-conformist in a notoriously conformist society - which reminds me of a joke I heard...<br><br>A ship is sinking. The caption ...

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... language. From there we went to a sushi restaurant. Because we can't speak Japanese, we motioned that we'd like a small meal and we got 5 lovely pieces of sushi and a bottle of hot sake. It was yummy. also expensive, but yummy. Overall, it was a really great start to our time in Japan. A once in a lifetime opportunity to visit.

... clothing thrift store, which was an interesting experience! They have everything you could possibly imagine arranged by type of clothes and by color. So for example, there were probably about 25 yellow cardigan sweaters in one spot. It was there that I first noticed how the employees in stores and restaurants in Tokyo yell a lot like they are advertising sales or something. I wish I understood what they were saying! We also visited the Imperial Palace where the ...

... and have all the basic necessities. For more information on the hotel chain around Japan, please refer to this website http://www.sunroute.jp/SunrouteTopHLE.h tml. Oh yeah, this hotel does not have CNN channel, only BBC news channel and other japanese channels. One thing that I notice is that, we can subscribe to paid programme or internet access by buying a prepaid card (cost 1000yen for one day) at each floor hallway. Never encounter this before and I think its pretty ...

... at the City Hall (where he collected the bodies of those who had commit suicide), and now he is the supervisor of the English Teachers, and sometimes leaves the office to go fix a light bulb or clock at a local school. Anyways, the party consisted of dinner/drinking at a local restaurant, actually a 30 second run (lily and i were late) from our apartment. We walked in, took off our shoes and sat down, first thing I noticed was that all the women were sitting together ...

Today we checked out of the Park Hyatt and took the bullet train to Shin-Kobe to meet our friend Mayumi. From there we took a bus to Arima, as small town about 30 minutes outside of Kobe, that is known for its hot springs. It was really beautiful! We stayed in a traditional ryokan (inn) that was set up against a mountain. As soon as we walked in the door we had to remove our shoes and put on slippers. When we were taken to our room we had to leave our ...

... almost never-ending cycle because the exchange rate from Japan to NZ is so good, that its just too much money for them to pass up. By the way, I went ot my first movie in Japan, The Ring, which is the American version of a Japanese film based on a Japanese book called The Ring. Pretty decent movie, but it cost Y1800, that's $15 US!! Man, movies will be few and far between for me...but I will ...