To Be In KoBe (The Best of Days)

Tuesday 11 August [Kobe]

Today, alongside with sunday (Nara) was really one of the best days so far in Japan. Although the first day Osaka and the Friday-Kyoto were quite nice too.
Anyway, today we went to Kobe where we were gonna meet up with Kana-san and her sister Aki-san. They were so nice to take us to see Kobe, their hometown. Kana-san, Frits' ....eeeh friend ;) came to Holland a few weeks ago. So there we switched emails so that we could meet up once we get to Japan.

So it was a great day. Guided by people who know the place makes it so much easier! That's one of the reasons we aren't so tired as we used to be on other days.

What we did today?

First went to "Weathercock House". A house built in a traditional german/europe way.
As you can see below in the photo with Homan, Kana-san and me.

Turns out there were even more of these kind of houses. You got the "Holland House", the "Denmark House" and more of these. Seemed like Kobe was the place for overseas traders back in the days.

After all the nice architecture we went to eat Soba. Look at all those Soba's!!

You needed to take of your shoes before you sat at the table.

Once our belly were full, it was time to go shopping!! One of the places we went to was Tsutaya, which sells music/film/dvd's/cd's. I bought the dvd "Shonen Merikensack" with my fav. actrice, the lovely Aoi Miyazaki!!

okay after we were done shopping we continued to Kobe's ChinaTown!

Hurray for the peacesign!

The ChinaTown was better/larger than that of Amsterdam (well duuuh, any ChinaTown is better than Amsterdams). But the biggest ChinaTown lies in Yokohama.

Next stop was the KOBE PORT TOWER, or KOBE TOWER.

Which was located along the shore.

So time to go up to this famous touristspot in Kobe!

Walking the stairs!!!

...

Noo, just kidding ;) there were elevators which we lined up for like 15 minutes.

Once we got up to the top, there was a chance to enjoy the faboulous skyline of Kobe.

Skyline again...=)

After the skyline viewings, it was 'resting time'. A short walk back to the shopping streets took us to a cafe where we had some drinks. Whereafter we went to walk again, saw a little shrine where I made some wish, and ended in foodplace somewhere hidden upstars. (Just like the Soba-place which was somewhere hidden too, but underground. We could never had found these places if we were by ourselves.)

Forgot what it was called, but we had some small dishes each time. (Small dishes like yakitori etc.)

Good times always fly by, so it was already time to get back to Osaka again when we finished our diner.

I would like to thank Kana-san and Aki-san for taking us around to see a wonderfull city. We had a great time. Even though sometimes the english communication wasn't that good, we still managed to talk =)

Thanks for today.

Arigatou!!

~~KinGuuMan~~~