Birthday Bash
Trip Start
Sep 25, 2002
1
15
40
Trip End
May 15, 2004
Kobe,
Japan
Tuesday, December 3, 2002
I finally get home at 7 in the morning and try to get some sleep before I have to go to training at 1! The training to teach kids was pretty useless, the trainer was totally unprepared and I could have run the show better than her...can't believe she makes more money than I do
01kobe
! ;) Observation: the rare occasion I watch TV is when they play a movie in English, generally on Sunday night. The strange thing is the time...the movie usually starts at 9:57 and ends at 10:46...its really strange to not be held hostage by commercials like we are in America. They have a commercial about every 12 minutes and there's a maximum of 3 commercials in-between.
Another funny observation is women on bikes. No, not biker babes! See, in Japan, practically everyone rides a bike - to the market, train station, etc. Well, I already wrote about the women and their stylish tendencies to wear ho-boots and fishnet stocking, but it's pretty damn funny to look up and see a decked out woman in fishnets and ho-boots heading for ya on her bike! The men too...you'll see guys in high-priced suits and trench coats swerving through traffic on their bicycles...and we're not talking fancy mountain or road bikes here, we're talking your grandfathers bike complete with basket up front and over-sized tires!! Pretty funny to see!
Anyway, after work on Sunday some coworkers and I decide to head out to Kobe for a bite to eat. Remember how I wrote about the Japanese people and their ability to maintain balance on the trains no matter what? Well, it's not quite the same for the whities here. My friend and coworker, Liz from NY, is on the train and she's already a bit loopy to begin with, well, we hit this curve in the track and Liz goes flying right into the lap of this shocked Japanese lady! I immediately start cracking up (hey, I could tell she was alright!) and she is just dead embarrassed! I give her a wink and tell her it could happen to anybody...I'm so nice!! LOL We end up eating at the Elephant Café, which is reasonably priced, has a great dark atmosphere and gives you a wide selection of dishes ranging from authentic Indian to Chinese, Thai or Japanese. I get Thai beef with veggies...really good, of course, not big enough to fill me so I order Indian fish cakes with bell peppers. :p After some good food and conversation, one girl says she knows of a good karaoke bar, so almost all of us end up there. The karaoke is very different here. First, it's amazingly popular here and taken very seriously. Also, it's not like in America where you're in front of some bar crowd, karaoke is performed in private rooms with friends, coworkers, or family. It's also pretty expensive, like Y1500 an hour per person with a two drink minimum. But, regardless, it was good fun. Since I am working some overtime on one of my days off this week, I decided to take advantage of my one day and head into Kobe to look around and try to find a good hike. The one good thing about looking around was I was able to find a nice little secondhand English book shop. The prices are from Y200 - 500 ($1.50 - 4.00) and there seems to be a decent selection, although you do have to root through the stacks to find books of interest to you. I read about this tram, kind of like a ski lift, in the hills of Kobe that lead to a mountainside herb garden and a few trails and decide to see what it is like. While riding the tram, we cruise over the beautifully landscaped herb garden to the top of one of the hills. At the top, there is a herb museum, inside, there are various herbs with detailed information on each, the actual root or flower from where the herb originated, and a decanter with a small portion of the herb inside for sample smells. After walking around the common areas for a bit I decide to try to locate a hiking trail...finding one rather quickly, I venture off through the forests of Kobe. This was not an easy hike! I was winding around and around, up steep trails and down similarly steep descents. I had to stop more than once for a breather, but I finally made my way down the mountain to the trailhead, where I see a map, which shows the local area with about 50 different trails! It was a great hike and I'll definitely be heading that way again. It was nice being out in the woods with no one else around and not having to dodge and weave my way through people...it is a very rare thing to find yourself alone in Japan...only 20% of the land is populated and over 120 million people live in that 20 % of area!!
