Day Three: Hiroshima-Kobe

Today we both woke up, groggy, and sort of stumbled around packing up for the train to Kobe. We leisurely skyped with Kelly and Mom for about an hour, and then hit the street looking for breakfast. On the way out, the hotel directed us to the Western buffet style breakfast place, and McDonald's Breakfast Hot Dog and Eggs fresh in mind, we decided why not. I'm a pretty adventurous eater and lover of Japanese cuisine, but the concept of a hearty Japanese breakfast of rice gruel and pickled mackerel kind of intimidated me. So in we went.

Oh, and check out these quilts hanging in the Western style place Dad made me take for Mom...

Long story short about breakfast. It sucked. We've been very lucky with the quality of Japanese food here. Food stalls are plentiful, cheap, and usually illustrated or have English menus. So come meal time, we've been wandering around, finding a place that seems ok, and digging in. So for the first time we try to eat a usual tourist meal, we end up having to pay $50 for two buffets of rubbery eggs, slowly browning fruit, and shitty coffee. Lesson learned... Get the hell away from the hotels whenever possible.

"I don't know... I usually like a little more junk in the trunk."

Also, there's some sort of wedding/bridal thing going on. Fall is the wedding season and Japan is just now beginning to embrace Western wedding customs (engagement rings, white dresses, "The Chicken Dance") and the Hiroshima hotel had several events. The one in Kobe (later) had an actual wedding happening in the lobby as well as a fashion show just before we arrived. But this poster reminds me... Does everything in this country have to be so damn cute?

Yeah, like that...

I guess so...

Well, terrible breakfast aside, we hopped in another cab, made it right in the Hiroshima station, and on the platform, met a New Jersey couple who attempted to "top" every Japan story we had. For example:

Me: We saw this awesome feudal castle

Jersey Guy: Oh, we went in this one place with a huge, classy, walled castle. It was better than a thousand Bon Jovi shows.

Dad: We went to the Peace Museum

Jersey Woman: Oh, we heard that was overrated. Instead we went to this one island with some classy Shinto crap. Our guidebook said it was literally like the Frank Sinatra of UNESCO Heritage Sites.

Dad: We've been pretty lucky with eating what the locals eat and hanging out away from our hotel.

Jersey Guy: Oh, we don't care for their food. The restaurants in our hotels have been really classy. Like, "Sopranos" classy.

Me: Bears

Jersey Woman: Jets

Dad: Italian Beef

Jersey Guy: Sausage and Peppers

Dad: Oprah.

Jersey Guy: Bruce Springsteen.

Me: (Punches Jersey Guy in the neck repeatedly)

Leaving Jersey Guy in a lump with a collapsed trachea on the platform, we hopped right on the arriving Shinkasen and zipped through the amazing Japanese countryside to our next adventure!

"Sure, it's pretty. But is it 'Jersey' pretty?"

Anyway, it was next stop... Kobe!

"Um... think less 'rape'-y"

"Bingo."

I've been waiting since I started this blog to make that joke. Anyway, as user friendly as Hiroshima was (as Dad puts it, "They learned to listen to us") Kobe is also really easy to get around and find stuff. Kobe actually has a long history of dealing with Westerners. Back when Commodore Perry came into Edo (now called "Tokyo") to boss around the Emporer and tell him to open his ports to Americans, the Emperor gave Americans the port of Kobe. Consequently, it was the busiest harbor in the World until 1995 when an earthquake leveled the town and the Japanese economy took a dump.

And all that trade means Kobe is one of the most diverse (or what passes for diverse in this seriously xenophobic society) cities with lots of Western style places (I saw at least a half dozen places for tapas in our guide. Spanish food is very in vogue around here) and a lot of people speaking English. The mountains and sea hem Kobe's borders in the north and south, so to keep the city growing, so they pushed a ton of earthquake debris out into the ocean (a la Chicago after the fire) and built this huge airport/convention center/amusement park complex we're staying at right now. The whole "Port Island" complex sort of looks like Orlando, but it's very pleasant.

Anyway, right off the train, we had a shuttle bus whisk us away to our hotel, we checked in, but had about two hours to kill before our room was ready. So we checked our bags and went wandering around the train area. And man did we find some stuff...

A whole store dedicated to the Hanshin Tigers baseball club!

A manga (comic book) store at least the size of our Barnes and Noble

AND A MASSIVE ARRAY OF ROBOT TOILETS! Can we keep one? Please?

Seriously, it had a flat panel remote and everything. I can get the seat warmed up and butthole sprayer prepped as soon as I get up in the morning...

But the street area we wandered around had everything. Like:

FISH WITH HEADS ON! Dad's worst nightmare!

Every single fish from the "Little Mermaid"... Deep Fried!

Hog knuckles and pig's ears! I took this picture for my dogs who would go *nuts* if I showed them this.

Yarn! At the dollar store!

"I didn't kill my wife!" "I don't care... What do you want to drink?"

So, my brother Aaron requested some Japanese woodworking tools, and while wandering around, Dad stumbled on "Tokyu Hands", which is like a Japanese Wal-Mart. Someone said they had a lot of hardware there, so in we went. After proceeding to climb nine flights of stairs and search every floor from kitchenware to

"Selected Stationary & Physics and Chemistry Items & Appointment Organizers"?!?!?!!!!!!1!! What the hell kind of place do you run here? By the way, if you're the Unibomber and you want to make bombs and write long political screeds to newspapers, this is the only floor you would ever need.

Anyway, we were about to give up after searching every corner of the this place, until Dad noticed they had a basement. And there it was... tool nirvana.

But Dad forgot exactly what kind of stuff Aaron wanted. So we noted where it was (just a short walk from the train station) and vowed to come back later this week.

Also, did you know Kobe is the fashion capital of Japan? It's true! We tried looking down some really sketchy ass alleys.

And guess what we found? Fabric shops! Like... every five feet! It was stall after stall of weird prints, fabrics, and stuff. I even pulled out my translator thing on my iPod and showed some of the clerks the word for quilting ("sashiko") hoping to find some cool stuff. But instead all they pointed out was some weird ass muslin. Again, we promised to swing through again later. But to make my mom (who reads this) happy, I present... FABRIC PORN!

That should hold her for a while. Anyway, we shuttled it back to the hotel (P.S. The bus is pleasant enough, but it is a pain in the ass to have to wait 20 minutes then a 15 minute bus ride to get anyplace where you can get affordable food, stuff to do, and then wait again to go back to your hotel. My one complaint about this hotel...) and the room was ready. And wow, it was a GREAT room!

Ocean and pool view...

Super nice amenities, complete with the most technologically advanced crapper we've yet to encounter.

Just a really nice room... Except we had one king bed instead of two twins.

Oh well, Can't have everything. We got showered, unpacked, and settled (finally, I'm tired of moving around and lugging bags everywhere) and hung out for a little while. We kept running into Dad's engineering buddies in town for the conference, most of whom kept complaining about the food, the flight, the language barrier, etc... It really seemed like me and Dad were the only westerners that were having a good time.

While waiting for the bus, we ended up with two guys Dad knew who figured we knew what we were doing food wise and followed us around. We found a decent looking place rather quickly, asked if they had an English menu and then stowed our shoes in little lockers.

We pointed at some stuff that looked good, ordered a whole bunch of different small plates of more traditional Japanese style stuff that would be palatable for three old American nuclear engineers, and dug in. Everybody seemed to be enjoying themselves, and we had edamame, gyoza (little pork dumplings), some shrimp and avocado spring roll with wasbai mayo, deep fried lotus root chips (like a potato, kind of)... I even attempted to get my dad to try a simple Tuna Maki roll. No dice.

Anyway, we came back, crashed, and Dad is snoring while I watch a really weird game show meant to teach high school kids English. It's two Asian-y looking Americans hosting and they tell a story about a little lost dog in New York City. He's trying to get back to his home in Japan, but he's lost and needs help. So they pause different parts of the story and explain what different words mean, and ask English quiz questions of the five kids in the studio audience. In the episode I saw, "Little Chabu" met a Broadway producer dog and they explained all the different ways they word "cast" could be used in English ("cast a spell", "cast a die", "cast a musical", "cast a broken foot"). And some of the grammar exercises they did were hard for me, and I've been speaking the language good for long time.

Anyway, bed time. Tomorrow Dad has work stuff to do, I've got programming homework I need to catch up on (anyone willing to tutor via e-mail?) and I'll probably stick to the Port Island area for dinner and exploring when I have time. I'm also dying to try the new fad in Japanese fast food, Curry Rice (Like a light Indian sauce over rice and Japanese style tempura seafood) but that's more of something to do when dad is eating rubber chicken at the hotel for lunch with other engineers.

Toodles.