Today Kuniko came over fairly early and picked me up, and we drove into Osaka to move some stuff from her apartment to her house in Kakogawa. On the way to Osaka we saw a sign for the Kobe Winery, so we decided to drop by.
The winery was pretty nice. There were some strange statues in front of the building, but inside it was a typical winery. The tasting room had lots of different bottles for sale. Kobe wine is typically a blended or flavored wine, so they only had a few natural wines there. They were OK, a bit thin, but considering the weather in that area, they weren’t too bad. Just for laughs I tried the blueberry flavored one – eck!
We walked around the facilities, and they had some unusual items laying around to amuse the kids. We walked through the cellar, but it was filled with old unused barrels and tanks – just for display now. However they did have a big high tech bottling line that looks like it gets a lot of use.
From the Kobe Winery we drove straight into Shin Osaka, and loaded up Kuniko’s car with boxes and clothes. It was weird to see her apartment being packed up and organized. I’m going to miss that place!
Next stop was lunch – we grabbed a burger at a restaurant inside an office building, and then stopped in at Starbucks before we left. We also stopped in at a gigantic American sized mall on the way home. It was huge – full of interesting stores. It was weird to walk through a typical American mall filled with typical Japanese stores.
That evening we went over to Kuniko’s house, and her parents cooked me dinner. We had inari sushi – delicious. I’ve never had it homemade before, and it was really good. We took lots of pictures of the cats (named Miruki and Kuro) and Kuniko’s parents, and I gave them some presents that my folks had sent over as kind of an introduction gift.
The gifts were a hit, and it was fun to watch them check ’em out. As usual I left with a full stomach, and Kuniko was nice enough to drive me all the way home.
