Last Day-Japan

Mark and I had talked about going to Osaka today, but since we did that on our first day we decided to try for the sake breweries of Kobe, instead. We left about 9:00, and headed for Sanomiya station. I was prepared to head straight out there, but Mark reminded me that it was 9:00 in the morning and maybe we should do something else first instead. So we bought an all day pass for the trains (I would have never figured this out, but Mark had done it the day before) and headed for China town.

Outside most of the major trains station in Kobe and Osaka (and I would guess all of the cities in Japan) are huge shopping malls. Some of them are underground, but they're all covered in some way or another. These malls have everything from Brooks Brothers to 100 Yen Stores. There's one mall that has 3 or 4 stores dedicated to socks. Socks seem to be a pretty big deal in Japan, and not the after thought they are in the U.S. These stations are also a great place to observe the Japanese implementation on English. Many signs are in English with no Japanese character translations. But the meaning of these signs is virtually incomprehensible. Mark's theory is that there's some sort of Japanese version of English that they can understand but native speakers can't. "Happy Smile for Open Hand Time," for example. Sometimes the signs are just really good descriptions of the store's purpose though, "We Have all kinds of Socks." We walked through one of these great malls on the way to China town and bought some awesome stuff at the 100 Yen stores. I learned how to fold paper cranes on the way to Hiroshima, and I bought a bunch of origami paper so I can keep practicing.

China town wasn't that big, and it was mostly just food booths, but it was colorful.

We tracked down a giant Buddha statue to that was very impressive.

Then we headed down to the Sake Breweries. There were suppose to half a dozen or so all in the same part of town. So we went to the train stop that was suppose to be near them, thinking it would be evident once we were there. But far from it. We walked in the wrong direction in this strange industrial part of town near the dump and warehouses before we finally gave up and went into a tire shop. There were 5 really surprised looking Japanese guys in there behind desks, but we pointed at the map and said "Sake sake sake sake." Until they figured out what we wanted. Finally one of them put us into his car and drove us to one. There was someone else from the ship there and he told us where to go next. The breweries are just like wineries back home, with a little tour and tastings and a shop. They just sample on or two sake's at each one though. I think we were both hoping for a giant line-up, but no such luck.

We went back to the central station area and found a place to eat and shopped a bit more. It was kind of an anti-climatic ending to Japan, but we had to get back to the ship and beat the rush.