Friday was the last day before the tests begin next week, and the teachers were madly trying to wrap up their exams. Some teachers asked me to double check their English, and so I was a little busy with that. I finished my last two interview test classes. I was getting tired of asking students what their favorite food is.
Late in the day I made arrangements to leave a few minutes early in order to get out to Kobe. Kuniko and I had set a date to go to Sweets Harbor, another theme type food court. The last two times that we tried to go there we arrived too late, so I wanted to finally give it a try. As you might expect, this one was all about dessert. First we had a quick dinner at a fast food court across the street – I had Panda Express, the first time that I’ve been able to eat it in Japan. It was really good – the serving size was a lot smaller, but I was still full after eating it. Interesting…
Across from Sweets Harbor they had an art exhibit set up, and we decided to walk through it really quick. The art is fairly famous, although I can’t remember the guy’s name as I write this. We signed in at the front, they gave us a little sticker to identify us, and then we walked in. Once you get in you can see lots of different pieces, all of them huge and beautiful, and they have lots of salespeople walking around hoping to hard-sell you into buying one for about a million yen. On the whole Japanese people will be very polite and will listen to sales pitches for a lot longer than I will. We were working against the dessert clock, so we got out of there after giving short monosyllabic answers to some questions by a helpful salesperson.
The next stop was Sweets Harbor itself, and we went in to find that it wasn’t so busy. For a Friday night, I was surprised. We walked around browsing through the shops, on top of pretend piers, with pretend water underneath and canned sound effects piped through the overhead speakers. Every once in a while a big barge would come through and make lots of noise. It was really a one-of-a-kind dining experience. I picked out a small cheesecake and some homemade pineapple gelato to share. Kuniko got a banana cream dessert that was really good, and filled with other fruits besides bananas.
After dessert we walked around the shopping center to burn a few calories, and then headed back to the train station. Kuniko went back to her parent’s place, and I came back to my place. Tomorrow we’re going to meet up and hang out for a while.
