The falls above Kobe were pretty spectacular, and it was a pretty good hike up some serious steps to get there. We started at the bullet train station in Kobe, and went right up the hill behind the station to find the falls.
Melanie was a trouper climbing up the steps. She’s a smoker, so I thought she’d have a tough time, but she did fine. At the top we enjoyed a pretty good view of the falls, and then climbed some steps to enjoy the view right above the falls. We were pretty bushed by then, and so we sat down on some rocks and just spaced out for a while.
There was a trail that continued up the mountain, and we were debating whether to continue up, or just head back down and go back into Kobe. We decided to go ahead and go up, and after about a two minute hike, we turned the corner to find a tiny little bar at the top of the mountain surrounded by jungle and rocky terrain. We went in and sat down, and enjoyed the view from the open air building out over the waterfall, while drinking beers and relaxing even more. It was the best payoff for a hike that I’ve ever had.
The little bar was almost empty, but there was a foreigner in there writing in her journal over a big bottle of beer. She stopped by and talked with us, and it turns out she is from Tennessee and participating in the Semester At Sea program. It was interesting to hear about her experiences. She was just finishing up five days in Japan, and now she is headed to China for another five days. It sounded like a lot of fun, and so we exchanged e-mail addresses to keep tabs on each other’s adventures.
After a few beers we went back into Kobe and stopped in at a ramen shop for a bowl of noodles. They had an interesting system where you bought a “meal ticket” at a vending machine on the side of the restaurant, and then handed the ticket to the server. Kind of strange, but they had pictures and numbers associated with each dish, so we could figure it out on our own.
After the noodles, we stopped in at a bar that had a Belgian Wheat Beer that Melanie was raving about, so we had a few there, and then we walked a bit around Sannomiya station, enjoying the crowds and live music. There were a ton of people there, and it was fun to see all the action running around there.
After getting home, I did some errands around the house for a while, and then called Antoine, and we decided to meet up at Like, Like for a couple of glasses of wine. We met in Kobe at around 8 o’clock, and then split a bottle of wine and talked about week two of teaching. I invited him to come over and check out my place, and head back to Takarazuka the next day, so we jumped on the second to last train of the night and pulled into my station around midnight.
