Kuniko and I had a really nice weekend and we were able to spend pretty much two full days together for the first time in a long while. Saturday I met Kuniko in Sannomiya for lunch after her morning classes ended and then we went together to a concert put on by her students. The concert was a little shorter than ones that we’ve seen in the past. <\/p>\n
As usual the concert was in the Rokkomichi area, the next town east of Kobe. I have really enjoyed visiting the area because it is a little more upscale than Okubo, but definitely a popular place to live. The feel of it is nice, and it seems like a great place to live. Unfortunately, it is a little out of our price range. Fun to visit, though!<\/p>\n
We killed time after the concert by shopping and looking around town. I found a bottle of Bogle Old Vine Zinfandel in a tiny liquor shop, as well as an oddly shaped building designed like it was severely crooked. It was fun to explore a new area – and we wrapped up the exploration with dinner at a restaurant specializing in cheese.<\/p>\n
In the Kitano area of Kobe there is a very nice (and very small) cheese shop that we often stop by to window shop. The prices are much higher than what you can expect to pay for similar cheeses at Carrefour, but the selection is staggering. Just about any kind of cheese you can think of from Europe is there. Turns out they have another store in Rokkomichi, this one with a restaurant up on the second floor. We had reservations for the evening, and so after looking wistfully at all the different cheeses on the first floor we went upstairs for dinner. <\/p>\n
For dinner we split several dishes (a four cheese pizza and an Iberco pork roast) and had a blue cheese and salami salad for a starter. We finished with a cheese plate with seven types of cheese, and had a bottle of Italian red wine with dinner. We loved all the food – the cheese pizza was decadent, with some German cheese infused with herbs and also some smoked gouda and gorgonzola along with another cheese I couldn’t identify. The cheese plate had several cheeses that we hadn’t tried – but the best was a French brie-like white mold cheese called Delice d’Argental. Not for the faint of heart, it was the most creamy and delicate cheese I have ever had. The scary part was any of the cheeses you liked you could just order from your table and they would hand over a shopping bag as you left. We picked up two small pieces to take home – it was so good. <\/p>\n
After dinner we hustled back to Okubo to take in a movie (a so-so 10,000 B.C.) and then finally came home to relax and sleep in. <\/p>\n
Sunday’s plan was to go into Himeji to see the sweets Expo there. It is a very big event with confectioneries participating from all over Japan. Actually I helped with some of the English translations for a friend of a friend, so I was pretty familiar with what the event would feature. Kuniko had gotten tickets from a friend and so we trekked into Himeji for the day to check it out. <\/p>\n
We caught a quick snack at a fast food burger place before going in (and that turned out to be a smart idea). The event was held on the grounds in and around Himeji castle, and there were a lot of people walking around town. As we got closer to the castle, it started getting harder to walk. By the time we got into the event, it was a mob scene. <\/p>\n
Most exhibitions had lines that stretched forever, with waiting time for just one exhibition hall running up to three hours. Luckily early on we found a line that moved very quickly, so we got to see some sweets. Even then, most of the time we were getting jostled around. <\/p>\n
Besides, there is something about seeing all these sweets – but shouldn’t we get a chance to taste them? They did have shops selling sweets all over, but the lines to these were 50-60 people long. The prices were also jacked up for the event, so after walking around for maybe an hour or two we decided to get out of there and go back to the station. They were selling the same sweets there for regular price and no lines. <\/p>\n
I was a little disappointed with the whole adventure, but it was a beautiful day and we enjoyed walking around and seeing lots of people. I hope if they do it again in the future they plan a little better. <\/p>\n
The rest of the evening was spent snacking on our take-home cheese, watching TV and relaxing. I was very happy to not have to put on my shoes and go to Osaka every day next week – but I will need to catch up on my schoolwork big time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kuniko and I had a really nice weekend and we were able to spend pretty much two full days together for the first time in a long while. Saturday I met Kuniko in Sannomiya for lunch after her morning classes ended and then we went together to a concert put on by her students. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pOpl7-nM","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1474\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}