Kobe Kita-No-Saka Hotel

... 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 ...

... at Steak Ron, delicious Sakuyaki at Hariju and more helpings of takoyaki/okonomuyaki/yakisoba.<br><br>S teak Ron<br>1-10-2 Sonezaki Shinchi, Kita-ku | Umeda, Osaka<br><br>Hariju<br>1-9-26 Nishishinsaibashi Chuo-ku Osaka<br><br>Takontetsu (Pizza Ball House)<br>1-9-20 Maru Bldg Umeda 1 Chome <br>

... most of the floor space. It was a "cozy" little dinner party:)<br><br>I made my now old Miyamoto Musashi chopstick joke (catching a fly in mid flight) and got a laugh out of a new, unsuspecting audience, then dug in and snatched some kimchi from my bowl&#8230; not bad, I thought.<br><br>Kimchi is to Korea what rice is to Japan: you eat it with every meal! Hyana had recently arrived from Korea and had brought a supply of authentic Korean kimchi, because let's ...

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... is this Oike Lake?" and he told me yes. As I was walking away he said, in perfect English, "Are you Brianne?" My mouth dropped. Here I am prancing around in a park no where near my home or school, scantly clad to work on my tan, and someone recognizes me?? He must have seen the shock in my face, because he went on to tell me his name. It didn't ring a bell until he took off his hat. Turns out, he's the substitute professor who comes to critique the young art teacher who just ...

So on Friday and Saturday, Feb. 29 and March 1, a friend and I went to Kobe to check out the famous port city of Japan. Kobe is famous both for the Hanshin Earthquake of the mid-90s, which hit Kobe and the surrounding area and killed thousands of people, and for being a main port of Japan which served as an ambassodorial city in the Meiji (late 19th c.) era. Today many of its houses with foreign inspired architecture, including the foreign district near Chinatown ...

... an ice cream (the best ice cream in the world), a waffle crust with vanilla ice cream and pieces of dark chocolate. Phil bought a flan. Back at the room a small fight ensued. It started over one of us taking too large of a bite, and the other not really being in the mood for flan. We started to watch the movie Irreversible, but between the hard-core gay sex scenes, and a man having his face smashed in with a fire extinguisher, we called it a night early.

... ducking in many of the various shops and stalls to shop. We sampled some Japanese sweets, watched beef being cut, shuu-cream (similar to cream puffs) being made, and I found my first (and probably last) SOY ice cream cone on the premises. We walked around the grounds in search of the FRUIT, but soon realized why admission was free in March...no fruit was in season. This was a huge disappointment to me ...

... set out into the district of Gion for a late supper and perhaps a chance of spotting a geisha. A few weeks earlier, we had picked up a copy of Memoirs of a Geisha, a story of a little girl who is groomed for geisha-hood in the 1930's and 40's. Set in Gion, the book provides a window into the life of these highly cultured private entertainers, who play seemingly dual and, to an outsider, perhaps contradictory roles as repositories of traditional Japanese arts, such as music, dance ...

... hills or something. I'm in the middle of a concrete jungle...I hope it doesn't come to a head where I just can't stand being in the city anymore. There are a lot of things I miss, mostly people and the types of food I love. Obvious things to those who know me such as: watching football, the freedom of having a car and being able to go anywhere you want anytime you want, hiking in the flatirons of Boulder, being able to IM on the computer with friends ...