A Weekend in Kobe

16th – 18th February, 2007

Another jam packed weekend. We rushed home from school Friday night and had to be ready to catch the 5:40pm bus to the station. Kobe is only 40 minutes away from Himeji by train and it only costs around 1780 yen for a round trip. It was a girls weekend so it consisted of me, Marie, Lauren and Karen (an American girl). It was the first time we had ventured somewhere without Steve so I was a little worried about getting around but I discovered that we could do it! The first night we checked into our hotel and went to this really ritzy Italian place for dinner. I ordered a set menu which consisted of antipasto, salad, a massive pizza and an alcoholic drink. The pizza was surprisingly really good. We planned to hit the town but were all too tired so just ended up crashing at the hotel so we could make an early start the next morning.







We met Marie’s teacher (Mayumi) and daughter (Yuko) on Saturday who were staying in their holiday apartment in Kobe. They took us to there apartment and it was amazing, small but really nice. They had planned all sorts of things for us to do. We were taken to a museum first of all which had a display of really old tools that were used to design buildings in the olden days. It was interesting to see the instruments they used back then and the way things were designed.

After the museum we went to a beautiful garden called Sorakuen Garden. It was raining when we went there but it was actually very peaceful. There was nobody else in the garden except for us so we could roam around at our leisure without being disturbed. The garden is apparently even more beautiful in spring so I will definitely have to make a trip back there to have a look and to take Steve of course!

Mayumi and Yuko then took us into the glass shop where everything was made out of glass – (similar to our Jam Factory). Everything in there was amazing. Some things were out of our price range but there were lots of reasonably priced items too. I bought a few items as a souvenir. We found out that we could actually make some glass at a museum which was close by so of course we wanted to give that a go.


Before we went to the museum we needed to fill up with food. We were taken to this restaurant for a buffet lunch –Japanese style. It was the best buffet I have ever tasted and once again totally different to the buffet’s we are used to. For starters forget the tongs,…..to pick up the food you had to use chopsticks – so that made it interesting. I still managed to fill my enormous plate with food!! We had a time limit of 90 minutes and we definitely made sure we were full. I almost had to roll out of the restaurant ☺




After a bit of shopping in the malls we made it to the Glass Museum where we were able to make a glass bead to turn into a necklace. It was something I had never done before so why not? We chose the colour we wanted and the pattern to put inside it and off we went. Of course we had a lot of guidance to make it but it was fun to create our own personal masterpiece. It looked quite easy but I’m sure if I had to do it on my own I would have had trouble. My finished product looked awesome – I love it!





From here we changed and headed to a jazz bar called Sonne. It is a famous jazz bar in Kobe. There was a cover charge of 900 yen but the jazz was awesome so it was worth it. We requested some songs which the singer sang and at the end of the night we talked to her and took a photo with her. She actually spoke English really well. After the jazz bar Mayumi and Yuko went home and we headed to our next destination which was an Irish Pub. By the time we got there the band had finished which was a little disappointing. We still stayed for a couple of drinks. The music was quite good. I found a flyer that said that there is an 80’s night on the last Friday of every month which is right up my alley, so I will definitely have to check that out at some stage.

There was a Chinese Festival on Sunday in China town where we met up with another teacher (Mariko) from Marie’s school. She was also really nice and could speak English really well. China town was packed and we could hardly move. We were packed in like sardines. I really wanted to see the ceremony so I had to put up with being pushed backwards, forwards and side to side. In the end I don’t even think that I was standing up on my own. If all the people suddenly moved I would have fallen over (that’s how packed it was). I couldn’t believe how pushy some of the Japanese people were. Marie and I managed to fight our way to the front! We had a pretty good view in the end – there was some sort of parade to start with and then there were all sorts of different dragon dancers. There were 2 groups of men and a group of little boys. Each group was spectacular to watch. They would have been exhausted at the end of it. Our weekend finished with some Chinese lunch and then the best coffee and cake that I have ever tasted.