07/14/2019
On Friday, Fu-san, one of my coworkers from mainland China, invited me to have dinner with his family. After work, his wife and daughter picked us up and we all drove to pizza hut together. I was telling him about how much I miss pizza from the USA earlier in the week, so he took us all there! They ordered a pizza that has 4 different types of pizza in one! I have never seen a pizza like that before. It was split into eighths, but each fourth had a different type of pizza (not just toppings, sauce too). They also ordered me my own vegetarian pizza, which was so kind of them. While we were waiting for the pizzas to bake, we went to the shop next store to look around and buy a few cokes to have with the pizza. Grace, Fu-san’s daughter walked with me around the store reading the Japanese that I couldn’t. She speaks Japanese and Chinese and is working on her English. She is literally SO CUTE. Initially, Fu-san told his daughter that I looked like Elsa and she got really excited and said she would practice her English so that she could talk to me. Grace was really into Disney princesses, so I showed her a few pictures of my bff Libby dressed up as Elsa, Anna, Snow White, and Rapunzel. She loved it and thought it was so cool I was friends with a princess.
We picnicked near a pond and enjoyed the pizza and coke. Grace showed me a few pictures and videos of her doing ballet and she was so cute! They wore real tutus and everything. She showed me a few of the games she liked playing on her IPAD. They were all Chinese games, but a lot were like ones I have seen back home. After we finished eating, we went inside a Starbucks that is famous in the Nara area. Fu-san ordered me, him, and his daughter matcha Frappuccino’s, which is Japanese green tea flavored. It was delicious! I helped Grace with her English reading for the evening and then Fu-san and I talked, while Grace and her mom worked on Grace’s homework. We chatted for a little over an hour and they drove me home afterwards. It was such a nice evening and was great to hang out with their family.
On Sunday morning, I slept in, as I was tired from the week. I videochatted Alex while I was getting ready to meet up with some friends in Kyoto. The Gion festival is going on the whole month of July, so there are a TON of people coming from all over Japan to see it. I met up with Kazuki around 3:30 pm near Kyoto Station. We took the subway to the festival area and walked around for a while. I tried asking him what the festival was about, but he only really knew it is very traditional in Japan and probably for a god. It didn’t seem like there was a ton going on to me, but I guess that makes sense because you can’t have some crazy stuff happening in Kyoto everyday for a month. There were some tall floats (shrines?), I am not really sure. There was a TON of people though. It took us 45 minutes to walk down the street, and of course it was pouring rain because rainy season is NEVERENDING. About an hour later, Yassi made it to Kyoto, so we walked around for another 20 minutes or so and decided to give up and go find food. We had these really good vegetarian dumpling-esque things (there is a Japanese name for them, but I can’t remember it). They were DELICIOUS though, I had a cheese & mushroom set and a potato filled set. After dinner, it was still raining a lot, so we decided to take our journey indoors and go shopping. We stopped by a cute shop and looked around for 20 minutes and then went to Wego. Wego is just a Japanese clothing chain store that plays really loud club music. I usually never buy anything from there because I can’t really pull off the Japanese style, but I did find a cute scrunchie! We went in a couple more shops and then found a purikura, which is a Japanese photo booth. It is WAY different than the ones in the USA though, because it automatically filters your photos for you. After you take your 4 photos, you go into a separate space and have like 2 minutes to edit all of your photos, so you literally hear all these high school girls screaming as they’re trying to edit their pictures in time. It was so much fun, and honestly I’d be lying if I said Yassi and I weren’t freaking out when we were trying to edit the pictures. Kazuki was like low key just messing around with them so we took charge, but they turned out okay! We were surprised when the camera took one of the photos because the flash was literally a WHOLE SECOND after it said go, so we accidentally moved. If you’re ever in Japan, you HAVE to try it (even if you’re a guy). Just be careful because the one we went into gave all of us red lipstick, including Kazuki.
We stopped by a drink bar called Sour near Wego, which they put FRESH mango and strawberry (or fruit of choice) in your drink. I was sooooo excited because fruit is so hard to come by here. I started buying canned peaches because I miss fruit so much. Anyway, the drinks were really great.
We left after some random Japanese guys started talking to us. I think Kazuki was a little annoyed because he was trying to translate, but just wanted to talk to us instead. Once we left, Yassi took us to this really cool speakeasy. It had nobody in there when we got there, but the drink was really good and they gave us free popcorn. You would never know the place existed if nobody ever showed it to you, which is obviously the point of a speakeasy. It had only candles for light and the floor boards kinda moved around but it had super chill vibes.
Kazuki was pretty surprised because he has lived in Kyoto for a year now and had no idea this place even existed. It doesn’t even have a name. Afterwards, we headed to The Book Store, which was a classy 1920s speakeasy. It reminded me a lot of the Whiskey Bar in Dayton. I had a Not Your Godfather (which is like some sort of cinnamon apple whiskey, complete with a Godfather hat), Yassi had a smoked mojito (they smoked it right in front of us), and Kazuki had a mule. He was pretty excited because the bar was playing jazz music, which is his favorite genre. I checked the time and realized I had to leave within 5 minutes, so we all finished our drinks and sprinted to the train station so that I could catch the last bus. LUCKILY, I did, and I didn’t have to walk the 40 minutes home.
Monday morning was a Holiday, Marine Day because apparently we celebrate the ocean life here. I slept in a little bit, waking up around 8:30 am. I had plans with Yassi and Bahereh (She is Yassi’s Persian friend that lives in Japan and works at ATR) to go to Kobe. I left a little late, around 10 am and got to Yassi’s apartment around 10:25. When we go out before like 2 pm, I have to go and get her moving because she gets super stressed and basically loses everything she touches. It took us about 20 minutes, but we finally were ready and met up with Bahreh and walked to Takenohara station after stopping at the ATM in AEON mall. It took us about 1.5 hours to get to Kobe. Ironically, when we were switching stations, we ran into Clement (French guy with same last name as me, but pronounces it wrong). He was actually going to the same Gardens that we were going to, so he joined us for the day. We went to the Kobe Nunobiki Herb Garden.
It is HUGE and is on the top of a mountain. We took the ropeway to reach the top, which is basically an air-conditioned ski lift. The view from the ropeway was gorgeous, and the flowers at the top were too! We took a ton of pictures throughout the garden.
There were a lot of great spots for photos because the Japanese women take a TON so they created several spots in the garden for photo ops. We didn’t have lunch so we had some French fries on the top as a snack. We walked around many types of flowers, fountains, indoor gardens with fountains, and so much more.
They had several hammocking spots as well, but none of the hammocks were open when we were near there. Eventually, we got really hot, so we decided to head back down the mountain to get dinner and go near the port area. Kobe was a port city a long time ago. Commodore Perry was actually the person who had Japan open up to trade with the western world from the city of Kobe. Kobe is also known for their expensive beef. It is “high quality” because they massage the cows everyday and give them beer before they are slaughtered. However, many Americans are not the biggest fan of Kobe beef because it is marbled. Japanese people like the marbling because they think it makes the beef beautiful, but Americans prefer a leaner cut. Kobe Bryant was actually named after the city of Kobe (or maybe the beef?? I’m not entirely sure, but I KNOW it has to do with Kobe, Japan). Of course, Yassi and I are vegan and vegetarian, so we weren’t about to try the kobe beef. We looked for a vegan restaurant, but it only had quiche, so we decided to try elsewhere. We walked around China town, hoping to find some vegetarian noodles or something, but it was a lot smaller than anticipated. We wandered a little further and found this cute burger shop with American flags and saw they had veggie burgers, so we ate there.
It was SOO GOOD. They had pumpkin, avocado, and BBQ sauce, so I was more than content. I can’t wait to have a black bean burger when I get back to the USA, like omg. Vegetarian struggles are REAL in Japan, I assure you.
After dinner, we walked toward the Kobe port, initially looking for the earthquake memorial. We stumbled upon a Carnival celebration where people were dancing around in these huge feathered wings and outfits for the celebration. It was CRAZY. The dancers came down into the crowd and Yassi and I joined the conga line that everyone formed. We danced around for about 20 minutes, it was a ton of fun!! There were so many cute Japanese people dancing around, including this Japanese dad that was trying to mimic the dancers on stage. It was so cute. Yassi has a video, you HAVE to see it.
The sunset was absolutely gorgeous, so we took some photos with the Kobe Tower background and a few with the ocean. Yassi used her professional camera, which resulted in some really great photos (once I learned how to actually keep my eyes open, 3, 2, 1 OPEN). Once the sun set, we walked back to the celebration area and listened to some live music and ate a mango slushie. It was humid, but the temperature started cooling down a little, which made the evening more enjoyable. We decided to head back to Kizugawa, as we had at least an hour and a half journey back, with a 15 minute walk. We met a huge cute dog named Jackson along the way! While we were walking to the station, there were some cute Japanese children singing Old MacDonald, but I think the only part they knew was E I E I O because that was the only part you could clearly understand. It was so cute. I tried sleeping on the train because I knew I would be tired in the morning at work. I finally got home around 11 pm, exhausted. We had a long day in the sun, but Kobe was really pretty and definitely worth a visit!
