Kobe

Hello from Kobe, my first stop in Japan! It only took me two long haul flights and an hour and a half in a van to get here, another 8 hours ahead of where you last heard from me.

By the time I arrived last night, it was all I could do to shower off the airplane grime and crawl into bed. But after a long sleep, I got up at a reasonable hour this morning feeling mostly human despite the time change, and checked the guide book to find that it didn't have much listed here in Kobe. So after my morning dose of caffeine, my mission was to go to the one tourist spot that did catch my interest, to get my pre-paid Japan Rail Pass* and to find some lunch.

By some stroke of luck, the only place in the guide that appealed to me was the Ikuta Shrine, which happens to be right across the road from my hotel. I can even see it from my window! So I slathered on my sunblock, strolled over there, and took a look around. With very few exceptions, my preference is to stay outside and snap a few photos of religious buildings, so I did the same with this shrine. From outside the entrance it looks tiny, but from above you can see how big it really is. They believe this particular shrine dates back to 201, which probably makes it the oldest human-made structure I've ever seen. My mind can't even fathom a building of that age. Since I wasn't going in for a religious experience, I didn't stay long, but I did find the place very pretty and peaceful.

From there, I took off into the busy city streets. Given the high heat and 70% humidity, I wasn't too keen to do too much wandering; I just wanted to get my errands done and then get back to the hotel for an AC break. But I couldn't find the stupid Japan Rail Ticket Office, no matter how many different parts of Sannomiya Station I wandered through.

First lesson from Japan: it's annoying being illiterate after reading for 40 years.

I know that sounds weird, since I've been to a lot of places where I don't speak the language, but when you can read the letters, you can still figure out a few words now and then. You can at least make sense of street names to know where you're going, and make a good guess at what kind of business is inside a building based on what the sign says. Here, none of that works for me. Turn left on Bunch of Characters that Have No Meaning to Me Street? Ooookaaaaay... Aaaaaaand... I'm lost. There's not a lot of English here (at least in a smaller city like Kobe), spoken or written, so I'm just left wandering, looking at maps, gesturing, and figuring it out. I'm a road warrior, I can deal and will get along fine, it just feels wrong being in a world without any words or letters that I can understand, at all.

Anyway. A place that I did recognize by letters I can't read was Uniqlo, one of my favourite clothing stores for basics like t-shirts, sweaters, jeans, and chinos... which are most of what I wear day to day, let's be honest. Given the cheaper home country prices and favourable exchange rate on the dollar, I was tempted to buy an extra suitcase and fill it up. But a clearer head prevailed, and I just picked up one plain tee to break the excessively large bill that the ATM gave me. I may not do so well next time I see a Uniqlo...

At this point, I'd been walking for over an hour and was getting tired of sweating, so I popped into 7-11, where I got a beef udon bowl for lunch to go. Yes, they actually do decent hot food at convenience stores here! When I told my Japanese friend that I don't do sit-down meals much while travelling, she said that 7-11 and Lawson are where I should buy all my food... quick, cheap, and tasty. One lunch down, and so far she's right.

Tonight I'll see my first Rugby World Cup game for 2019, then tomorrow morning I jet off to the next city. Since I had to cut my time in Japan down to only one week, it's going to be mostly a blur, but I'm going to do my best to soak up as much as I can while I'm here...


*I was advised by a Japanese pal of mine to get a Japan Rail Pass while here, because you can go everywhere on high speed trains, and it would save me tons of money. But you can't just buy one from outside the country. I had to order a voucher that got mailed to me, which I then need to take to one of the official Japan Rail ticket offices, which only exist in a few cities. Then, upon filling out some more paperwork, they will give me the actual pass that I can use for riding trains. And after I'd already paid for it and started looking up the train times between cities I'm visiting, just to plan ahead, my Japanese train finder app basically flipped me off and laughed hysterically as it told me trains were unavailable or unbearably long for all but one of my journeys. Of course.