Last weekend I was the luckiest duck in the world, because I had a chance to return to what is quickly becoming one of my most favourite places in Japan - Kobe! There's just such a fantastic vibe going on in Kobe. It's a trendy city. Great food, quirky little cafes in interesting places, beautiful traditional sites, but also a stylish modern waterfront metropolis - it's seriously got everything you need to have an ace time.
You may remember Rosanna from orientation week in Tokyo, but here's a quick recap in case you need a refresher: Rosanna is a British JET working as an ALT at a junior high school and special needs school in Kobe City. She's remarkably tall, and has long slender limbs and the most glorious mane of voluminous blonde ringlets that fall almost to her waist. She's very intelligent and patient, and is perhaps the most grounded and pragmatic person I've ever met. Rosanna was my room mate for three days during Tokyo orientation and we got along splendidly (I have a sneaking suspicion the voice inside my head has adopted a British accent and vernacular for this post). Anyway, it was Rosanna's birthday on Saturday 7th, so I jumped on the shinkansen from Okayama City with my weekend duffle bag and hopped on over to Kobe to hang at her apartment all weekend and help her celebrate.
It was a pretty early start for me, firstly because I was bloody excited to be seeing some friends for the first time in weeks, secondly because I was bloody excited to be visiting Kobe, and thirdly because I didn't want to miss the early train to Okayama City and have the delays eat into Birthday Celebration Time. Though the shinkansen means Kobe is a lovely short trip, the inconvenience of the local public transport systems on either side of the high speed bullet train turned the 'trip' into more of a slightly less desirable 'journey'. All up, it was four trains and a bus over a 2 and a half hour period before I was standing at the bus stop in the sun, waiting like an impatient puppy for that glimpse of telltale golden blonde coming down the road.
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| She's so tall I have to look up into my camera lens, so I don't chop half her head out of the photo.😆 |
After a joyful reunion, Rosanna showed me her home. Gotta say, I've got some pretty intense apartment envy. She lives in a recently-built complex of hundreds of identical apartments across three or four blocks, and there are around 50 ALTs living there. Apparently Kobe has (I may be misremembering the figure, but I'm pretty sure) over 200 JETs working in the city, which is absolutely mind-blowing to me, coming from Soja where it's literally just me - in both my apartment block and the city itself. There's always social events happening at any given time of the week, so there are heaps of opportunities for her to get out and do stuff if she wants. The downside of this, which is also why I don't envy this aspect of her placement, is that it's more difficult to make local friends when you're surrounded by like-minded foreigners almost one hundred percent of the time. I do like my quiet little life in Soja, and the relationships I'm developing with my Japanese colleagues.
Her apartment is very lovely, though. It has a nice little entry with a place to put all your shoes (mine does not), all the floors are lacquered wood in a nice pale shade (mine are lino), and the walls are white - so the place feels open and airy, and bright (mine feels like a dark and shadowy cave, unless it's a weekend and I've got all the doors and windows open to let as much natural light in as possible). She has three rooms - a kitchen and two tatami rooms - as well as a little toilet, and a shower room with a tiny foyer for the sink, mirror and cupboards. The really cool part is that all the internal walls (the walls separating the rooms) are Japanese-style sliding doors, so the entire place can be open plan, if you desire. Anyway, it's a very nice, cosy little home - pretty much exactly what I'd hoped my apartment might look like. Ah, well! I'll just have to visit her more often so I can lovingly rub my cheeks on the white walls and modern kitchen appliances.
Moving on.
We relaxed on her hand-me-down sofa and caught up over a cup of tea, then ventured back out into the afternoon to jump on the train and head into the Sannomiya area (the trendy part of Kobe, around JR Sannomiya Station). There's tons of restaurants, shopping arcades and department stores, and a short walk away you can find Ikuta Jinja (a beautiful Shinto shrine that's coming up later), a cable car and hiking trails that'll take you up Mount Rokko (yes, mountain access in the middle of the city), and a historical merchant district called Kitano-cho, back from Kobe's days as one of Japan's largest port cities open to foreign trade, and which apparently (I still haven't had the chance to visit) has retained a lot of its old European personality. My inner history nerd squeaks in excitement.
We were hoping to try some famous Kobe beef for the first time, but the well-known restaurant we'd been recommended to try had finished serving lunch just before we arrived (dang it). So we went for ramen at Ichiran instead. When in doubt, the answer is always ramen. Ichiran is a very famous franchise in Japan, and they offer a unique solo-dining experience. There are little wooden walls between each single booth, which fold away if you're dining with others and want to make it a social experience (which is what we did). Otherwise, you're closed into a personal booth, and after they've served you a bowl of extremely delicious rich pork broth and pleasantly firm noodles (they completely customise a bowl of ramen for each customer), the staff roll down a wooden curtain so you won't even be disturbed by the people in the kitchen. Every man and his dog seemed to recommend this place to Shane and I when we were in Hakata, Fukuoka back in May, so this was my second visit - and it did not disappoint. I definitely recommend giving it a try if you're a ramen fanatic like me!
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| Rosanna treated herself to a birthday macha pudding. It was like panna cotta. |
After our late lunch we went for a casual but purposeful stroll towards the department stores containing Jill Stuart (there are none in Okayama and it hurts my soul), spent altogether far too much money on expensive but delightful cosmetics, then met up with another of Rosanna's friends named Naz, who is an absolute hoot and who I'll be glad I met for the rest of my life, even if I never hang out with her again. Naz has a unique energy that is inspiring and uproarious. She rocks classic vintage glamour and oozes charisma, and she's fun and fearless. AND she's got this fantastic Birmingham accent - the rich and smooth kind of British, with a slightly husky undertone. Girl got me shook. Can people in their upper-twenties even say that? Anyway, Naz is Bangladeshi and has beautiful dark features, and everyone needs to meet her because she's seriously fantastic and your life is emptier without her in it.
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| Stunning kimono for sale in a fancy department store. |
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| Jill Stuart Cosmetics, smelling like sparkling princess magic and bringing me unreasonable amounts of joy. |
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| These beautiful souls. 💖 |
Naz is also an ALT in Kobe. She's been in Japan a couple of years now, and is a seasoned local. She's also got a massive thing for trains (seriously), so she knows pretty much the entire timetable for each line off the top of her head, which is a hugely impressive feat and also extremely useful. We happily allowed her to become our tour guide for the rest of the day. After presenting Rosanna with a Happy Birthday pear tart (all Naz; I claim to be no part of that magic), we took Rosanna for her first visit to Harbourland (mandatory for any first-time visitor to Kobe; put it at the top of your to-do list), where we popped into the Anpanman Museum for five minutes and hung out on the Ferris Wheel to watch the sun set over Meriken Park, and all the lights strike up across the city. Extremely gorgeous.
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| Anpanman, a super popular character in Japan (not sure why there is a random child's shoe). I believe he is made of bread, which might explain why all the students keep saying they want to eat him. |
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| Cute wall. Must photo. |
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| Unbelievably cute lockers in the Anpanman museum. |
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| Kobe Tower (red) and Meriken Park from Harbourland. |
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| I adore Ferris Wheels. More photos incoming. One is never enough. |
After some more shopping around Harbourland and a delightful wander down a street lined with trees adorned in fairy lights, where we stopped to watch the last of the sunset and admire the rainbow lights of the Ferris Wheel against the night sky for a while, we decided we were hungry and went for Indian curry. I've been told Kobe's curry is pretty amazing, so add that to your to-do list, too. The place we went was tucked almost underground in a little indoor arcade, and it was very delicious. I love that over here you can get a set meal including a main, a salad and a drink - and sometimes a side of rice or dessert - for like 750 yen, which is less than ten bucks. We opted for the chicken curry set, and mango lassi. Always scrumptious; never disappoints.
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| I like fairy lights too. Maybe as much as Ferris Wheels. |
It was getting pretty late by that point, and Rosanna had developed a crummy headache, so we wrapped the activities up with some birthday purikura (photo booth culture in Japan that is super popular with teenagers and young couples in particular; famously makes everyone look unreasonably cute in pictures by enlarging the eyes, softening the skin, glossing the hair, etc). Then we nabbed some mixers for a bunch of alcohol we'd bought earlier and strolled down to a trendy outdoor sitting area with nice benches, where we sat and drank and chatted for hours (it's fine, drinking on the street is legal over here) until it was time to go home. We parted ways with Naz the Spectacular after promising to meet up again and hang out at Spa World in Osaka (I really hope that happens), caught the train back to Rosanna's, and did that thing we do where we say we're going to bed and then sit up for two more hours talking, like teenagers on a sleepover. Rosanna and I just seem to be able to talk endlessly with no effort at all. It was honestly like that right from the moment we met. Sometimes you just click with people, you know? I will be eternally grateful that the universe gave me Rosanna that day I arrived in Tokyo. I hope we'll have many more adventures together. 💗ðŸ‘
More to come on Kobe soon! x
