This evening after school I went to Kobe to do some shopping in Chinatown. Chinatown is just south of the Motomachi station in western Kobe, and it was an easy walk from the station to the main part of Chinatown. Kuniko came and met me after her work finished up, and we walked together and ate various goodies from the street vendors. Most of the street vendors are Japanese, but when you go in the little stores behind the vending stands, you realize how many Chinese people are there.
I stopped in one shop and picked up various sauces and spices, for about half the price as you would pay in a place like Carrefour or an import food shop. The cashier wasn’t sure what language I spoke, so he asked his daughter to come over and ask me what I was looking for in English. Later, when I was checking out they had their son translate the amount of the bill and then he gave me a cheerful “Have a nice day!” in English as I left.
Kuniko and I had some trouble finding a decent dessert – we got what were described as Mango and Lychee shakes, but it turned out they were just flavored slushes like Slurpees. Mine was good, but Kuniko’s mango one wasn’t so great.
On the sixth floor of the gigantic Daimaru department store they had an exposition of Hokkaido goods, so we went to check it out. It was really cool – like walking through a farmer’s market in Hokkaido. There were a lot of things that you normally can only get in Hokkaido, so we got some desserts there to take home.
We stopped in at a Starbucks for something cold to drink, and from there went down to the Mosaic pier to walk around, ride the ferris wheel, and relax some more. There were lots of couples there, as usual, and the weather was perfect for enjoying the skyline view of Kobe.
We were both starting to get tired, and since it was a school night we headed back to the train station. Kuniko went on home, and I got off at Akashi, changed trains and went through Ito Yokado on my way back home. It was a nice school night excursion – it’s good to break the routine every once in a while.
