Kobe

My skin has cleared up brilliantly so now I just have to contend with a heatrash that crops up every time I do any exercise. A brilliant excuse to stop running and get fat I suppose, but I`d rather not.
Went to Kobe on Wednesday. This meant getting up early and spending 35 pounds on a one way ticket there. It hurt. I was knackered from staying up and drinking beer in the park (my new favourite hang out). I like the scenery in Kansai and I tried to stay awake on the Shinkansen but I dozed off. We got to Kobe and wandered around in the sweltering heat trying to find the bookshop. Japan doesn't do second hand bookshops as a rule so we hunted this one out and spent ages there picking through their stock. Took the cablecar up the hill and got a great view and brilliant lunch in a mock-German style restaurant full of old people. It was too early to check in so we wandered downtown to see if Kobe was really as bad as the Lonely Planet made it out to be. Kobe is actually a great wee place, full of ace pubs and restaurants. It has a totally different feel to Nagoya. There isn't that much to do if you're a tourist, but I thought it would be a great place to live. It's hard to believe that it was all but flattened ten years ago; there's very little to show of the earthquake now. We decided the Lonely Planet writer must have been dumped in Kobe to be so down on it.
We had a game of pool to pass the time until we could check in. I let Iain win. After we checked into our room (with the worst view ever - a building site scaffold three inches away from the window) we headed back out and went down to the earthquake memorial park. They've left a bit of the harbour wall as it was after the earthquake and it's a weird sight. Headed back into the centre and wandered around Chinatown for a couple of minutes (that's all it took) then stumbled across a jazz bar. Strange mix of cool jazz accessories (LP's signed by Miles Davis, a wall of LP's to be played in the bar) mixed with the decorative style of your Great-Auntie's house. China cups and saucers, doilies, you name it. Then we headed for a Mexican-style place we'd seen earlier but hadn't been open (we were misled by the open bar, music, and staff willing to serve us). We had a couple of extortionately priced beers and then ambled off to find a Thai place that had had rave reviews. Unfortunately the reviewer wanted to keep it a secret and gave a vague set of directions. Couldn't find it, so went to another Mexican place for dinner instead. Early bed due to to many beers and an early start.