Monday, October 20, 2008
Kobe and Osaka
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Another not so early morning. Woke up at 0800 JPT, washed up, ate breakfast and got on the 0957 Special Rapid Service towards Himeji. Today, we didn't go all the way, we got off at Sannomiya station (Kobe) and took a walk towards the old foreign settlement.
We got a map at the station and that made it easy for us to navigate the place. We walked along the Flower Road and came upon this Flower Clock that has different designs as time goes by. Next we passed by the Kobe Earthquake Memorial. It's a pretty nice memorial, with a water feature and a pathway leading to a room with names underneath the water. You could see the water through the glass roof.
After that we continued on to find the Old Foreign settlement. Turns out that there isn't anything much left. Everything's been redeveloped and the only things left are a couple of museums. We then went on to Nankinmachi (Nanjing Street) which is the local Chinatown. We had lunch there, it was pretty good and one of the waitress was from China. We only discovered that after some finger pointing and stuff. She heard my friend and I speak mandarin and was like "Hey you speak mandarin!". So we managed to get our lunch, safely without beef.
After lunch, we went to Osaka. Nothing much here to do but to walk around in shopping centres. My friend and I ended up walking in the food sections alot lol. We bought a couple of pork buns and they were quite nice. The department store staff are really cordial, we were in Daimaru and everyone greeted you as you passed by. When they were leaving the area via staff exit, they would stop at the door, turn and bow before exiting.
We took the lift once and when the lift attendant came out to greet us with her left hand extended 45 degrees towards the floor, I thought she was trying to tell us to hang on or something, lol. I wonder what that gesture is for.
Walked around food stuff some more and then we decided to go back to Kyoto.
Back in Kyoto, we walked around the underground shopping area in near the JR, bought some discounted watermelon pieces (about 5 small slices) at about 350 JPY just to try what the expensive watermelon tastes like. My friend bought some grapes at about 250 JPY. We actually thought they were selling for 150 JPY each because of the sticker on it with 150 JPY on it. Turns out that it meant that there was a 150 JPY discount on the fruits lol. Oh well, the watermelon was rather nice. The blackcurrant looking grape tasted decidedly alcoholic. The green grape was nice and the red ones were sweet but the seeds were darn bitter. I accidentally bit on a seed and that got me awake real fast.
Bought some bread (red bean paste bun) for dinner and that's it for the day. Nothing much exciting.
My friend is amazing. She sleeps rather early, and then she falls asleep on the trains and then she gets sleepy while we're outside walking lol. It's only the 3rd day and tomorrow is going to be another challenging day!
Nara!
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