I spent today in Kobe with Kuniko, and we made the most of the beautiful weather and open schedule. We started by going into town and hitting the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art. There were two special exhibitions going on there, one about Louis Vuitton and it’s brand’s history, and the other about how clothes worn by the nomadic cultures along the silk road in eastern Asia helped influence fashions of today.
In the permanent collection of the museum they had some disturbing artwork by Yokoo Tadanori – lots of angst, kittens, nudity, and blood. We walked through the entire museum, taking our time and completing the building in about two hours.
After walking all over the place we decided to rest over some coffee and sandwiches. The back part of the museum opens out on part of the Kobe Harbor, so we could enjoy some sea breezes as we sat in the shade. From there we plotted our next move.
We went into Sannomiya to wander around, do some shopping, and kill some time. We explored Tokyu Hands, and then walked around the eastern part of Kobe to sneak up on the Kitano district. Near Shin-Kobe station we bumped into an NHK marketing group who took our picture with some of the mascots from the station.
We walked the mountainside towards Kitano and spent some time among the old western style buildings there. They are kind of a tourist attraction – not many big western style buildings can be found in Japan. The area is also known as kind of a romantic lover’s walk around place, and there was evidence in the bridal shops and wedding planning services all over the place. This is like ground zero for overpriced Japanese wedding services.
Finally we headed to the restaurant where I had made reservations – Graciani’s. Kuniko and I hadn’t been there in a long time – almost six months. Mr. Hayashi stopped inviting her to places since she was so busy with work, and for some reason he wasn’t too keen on going to Graciani with me around.
The waiter recognized us immediately, and if he noticed that we appeared to be in at least a dating situation, he said nothing about it. He did (as is his job) approve of my wine selection, telling Kuniko in Japanese that it’s a pity that Mr. Hayashi won’t let me order wine there for fear of embarrassment on somebody’s behalf. The wine turned out to be quite good – a French Cote du Rhone that was easy to drink. Our meal was roasted beef, the salad was a risotto and seafood mixture, the soup was a purple sweet potato, and the dessert was chocolate mousse.
After a brief skirmish Kuniko insisted on picking up the bill, and so we walked back to the station with full stomachs. They were so full, in fact, that we decided to walk along Motomachi to the Kobe station and save a little money and burn a few calories.
Since we ended up at the Kobe station, I bought Kuniko a drink at Like, Like – one of the places that Antoine, Nel and I used to visit fairly often many months ago. The bartender was the same guy I remembered, and he had a funny conversation with Kuniko about Antoine and his antics from day gone by. We’ve definitely got to the gang back together and head over there.
We got off the train in Futami and cut through Ito Yokado. Kuniko has been researching good deals on cell phones for me – after three or four mishaps where I didn’t have any way to reach the people I was meeting, I was considering getting one. Especially since I’m on foot all the time, it might be a good idea.
We looked around and found a likely phone. I couldn’t believe how many things it can do free of charge – cell phones have come a long way since I last had one. I guess being in Japan helps. The phone guys had already gone home, so we went back to my place talking about maybe getting one the next day.
Kuniko has to leave tomorrow morning to go visit her family, so we made today my official birthday celebration. It was a great day – we’re both exhausted from walking all over the place, but we more than made up for that in calories from dinner.
