Saturday morning I was up early ready to conquer the world, or at least a small mountain. Unfortunately, Richard was crashed out asleep. I hit the shower, did a little studying, and just kind of hung out until Naoko called around ten o’clock. She asked to speak to Richard, so her called served as a wake up call.
I cooked up some om-rice for breakfast, but I don’t think Richard was too into his – he’s overdosing on rice nowadays. We took off for Kobe to do some hiking and look around a bit more.
In Kobe we walked to Nunobiki waterfall, and then had a couple of beers in the little bar overlooking the falls. The weather was perfect… it was a beautiful day.
After spending some time walking around on the mountain, we decided to go back into town and look around a bit. Richard found lots of old books in a bookstore in Motomachi, and we had lunch at a nice little tonkatsu place.
At around five o’clock we headed back to Akashi, and we had time to drop into Donkey and shoot some darts before meeting Naoko. When we got to the station she was already there. It was great to see her. She had cut her hair just like Richard had cut his. We went to get some dinner at an okonomiyaki place that I know, and poor Richard had to pick through his while Naoko and I chowed down.
After dinner we went back to my place and I gave Naoko the grand tour. She got things organized and Richard managed to talk her into running down to the yakitori for a quick beer. We got there just as some of the usual suspects arrived, so we all sat down and Richard did his best with Japanese. He ordered up some food and beer, but I was trying to save money and I ordered water. Naoko did the same.
“One more beer” turned into four drinks, and pretty soon the master was pulling out the Okinawa version of tequila. We had a great time, and it was fun to talk to everyone. The language was Japanese – not much English was spoken that night at the yakitori.
Finally we got going and headed home. We all retired fairly early, and got plenty of rest for the next day.
