11.24.09

I got up this morning and Katie and I headed out into Kobe. We stopped at the hospitality desk and picked up some maps and we were on our way. We first headed to find the shopping streets. We got a little lost and asked a man where it was. The man said something to us in Japanese and then walked away with our map. His wife then took my arm and escorted me to follow her husband. The husband then turned around and in broken English said we go together. So we followed this man and his wife. They were so cute. They tried to make conversation with us. When we got to the shopping area everything was closed. Through hand gestures we learned everything opened at 10. It was 0915. So we had an hour to kill. We found a café and bought some internet. We sat outside and killed time.

At 10, we headed back that way. Stuff still wasn’t open. It was weird because we found all sorts of stores for real shopping. There were no stores for souvenir type stuff. It was pretty ridiculous because all we could find were show stores.

At some point we ended up in China and India, but not Japan. Weird. We got some awesome chicken on a stick, but didn’t find much else there. So we got on the subway and headed to Nara. Nara is another section of Kobe, where there are sake breweries.

We arrived in the sleepy little town of Nara and there was NOONE anywhere. We did see one woman who was walking her schnauzer and I got so excited and I ended up running over and petting the dog. The little woman thought it was hilarious and she couldn’t stop giggling. I thought I had terrified her. She was adorable. We continued walking and ended up walking right past the brewery we wanted to go to. After stopping at a gas station for directions, we made it to the brewery only to find out that it is closed on Tuesdays. Of course it is. Apparently, the Japanese are not fans of sake on Tuesdays. The security guard there did give us a name of a brewery that was open. We found it after a quick walk and I think we somehow managed to get in the back way into the museum. Everything was in Japanese so we really didn’t understand much, but it was cool to see it. We got to try some sake and it wasn’t nearly as strong as I thought it was going to be. One of the main reasons we went to the brewery was to buy sake sets. The first place didn’t have much so we went on to another place called Skauken. We found some with breweries name on it. They were pretty cool. After walking around some more, we admitted defeat we headed back to Kobe.

Once back in Kobe, it was almost on ship time so we headed back to the ship. We stopped at the little souvenir shop because it was one of the only places that you could find the touristy stuff. We spent some yen and the exchanged the rest and boarded the ship.

Once on the ship, we just hung out and relaxed. I was dead tired so the night consisted mainly of watching House. It is kind of sad to be leaving out last port. We watched the farewell band from our cabin and waved goodbye. And so we left our last foreign port.