Today I took a trip up to Rokko mountain. It's been about a year since I was up there last, and this time I wanted to check out some places that I hadn't visited as of yet.
Before heading out to the mountain, I stopped off at a tourist information center to buy the Rokko/Maya 1 day ticket. It is actually a really good deal at 1500 yen. It includes return city bus tickets from either Sannomiya or Shin-Kobe to either the Maya Viewline (Cable Car and Ropeway) or Rokko Cable Car stations. It also includes a return ticket to ride either of the above cable cars/ropeways, and unlimited hop on/off for the buses that run between the locations on the mountain itself. And, you also get discounted entrance to various facilities (generally 100 yen off) on the mountain (and apparently discounts in the restaurants as well, although I didn't utilize this particular function). This time I chose to ride the Maya line as it is the only cable car in Kobe that I haven't tried yet. And even if that were all I was to do, I would still save, as a return ticket for both sections of the line is 1540 yen. The bus on top of the mountain, depending where you want to go range from 210-500 yen per trip. So for this particular trip, the pass saved me over 1500 yen! Nice!
Going up...
Other than riding the Maya Cable Car and Ropeway, one of the main things I wanted to do was visit Rokkosan Pasture (六甲山牧場) and then if I had time the Rokko Alpine Botanical Garden (六甲山高山植物園).
As today was a national holiday in Japan, and since the weather was absolutely beautiful, I was expecting there to be quite a few people up there. And indeed, there were. At the Rokkosan Pasture, most people visiting there were families with young children, or couples out on dates. The atmosphere that they advertise creating is a Scandinavian/Alps type environment. The buildings were made for that purpose, and for authenticity? they even had a yodeling group performing at one of the entrances.
That aside, it actually is quite nice up there. There are sheep everywhere, roaming freely around the grounds, and you are free to touch and interact with them if you so choose.
"Rare sheep village" umm...ok.....
"Excuse us, comin' thru..."
In terms of other animals, they also have cows, goats, ducks, pigs, sheepdogs, rabbits and horses. Most of these are relatively accessible and the children can touch them as they please.
Just hanging out on a roof. 'cause that's what goats do...
They named this cow Lamborghini...
SO CUTE AND FLUFFY!!!
Cute!!!!
In some cases they even have various events related to the animals at certain times. There is a sheepdog show, children can ride the ponies (being led around by a staff member), there is a rabbit feeding time, and a calf feeding time as well. Twice a day they milk the cows, and for a price (200 yen), you can buy a cup of freshly milked milk. There are a few restaurants around as well offering a variety of Kobe foods (lots of Kobe beef, camembert cheese dishes, lamb dishes, Kobe wines, etc). As for me, I tried the fresh liquid yogurt drink. It was good!
Yogurt WAS here... 😜
One of the main buildings also has some various hands on experiences that one could try, such as making ice-cream or frozen yogurt (a little expensive at 850 yen), or there is a craft area where you can make these little sheep using wool from the sheep there, and there is also a cheese making experience as well.
The thing that I liked the most was just the general area. There were lots of grassy hills and some beautiful views!
Reminds me a bit of some areas in NZ...
After wandering around in the pasture area for a while, I went out to the Rokko Alpine Botanical Garden. It's actually within a 5 minute walk from the Music Box Museum (where I went last year). I didn't realize they were quite so close to one another. It was nice, but a bit of a let down. It was considerably smaller than expected (although that may have been due to the fact some areas were closed off due to damage from the weather we've had this year), and there wasn't actually much to see. But...that also might be because we're kind of in between summer and fall at the moment.
Insect eaters!
After that I took a bit of a walk before getting back to the bus to take me back to the Maya Ropeway.
My original plan for the rest of the time was to enjoy the views until sunset (it was looking like it would be a nice one with the skies the way they were today) and then go back down the mountain. However, since I seem to be starting to get a little bit sick and was getting tired, I decided I didn't want to wait another hour for sunset, and I just went back down. But...I did get to enjoy the sunset a little bit once I was back down the mountain. And, as expected, the colors were really nice tonight!
Time to go home...
The view from the top of the Maya Ropeway. It was so clear today, you can see all the way to Osaka!
This past weekend I have been in Yokohama to attend an IB workshop as a sort of professional development. I came together with four of my co-workers on Thursday evening.
Pretty clouds from the Shinkansen. Click here for the link.
Since it was my first time in Yokohama, and a typhoon was supposed to arrive on the weekend, I wanted to do some exploring before the weather took a turn for the worse (as well as find the location where the workshop would be held the following morning).
I started out with a walk through Chinatown (which was right next to my hotel). Yokohama's Chinatown is much larger than Kobe's but it was so quiet! There weren't many people out at all, which was really surprising to me because Kobe's Chinatown is quite busy in the evenings. Then I thought maybe because it was a Thursday, but it was actually quite quiet over the weekend as well. Actually, Yokohama seemed really quiet overall. I'm not sure why, it's a large city...
They were playing drums inside when I walked by...
Oh! Also, very important!! The kinmokusei are in bloom here because it's further north! I was so excited. If you don't know, that is a type of tree/shrub with small orange flowers that bloom only around the end of September to the middle of October, and they are incredibly fragrant, and once you smell it, you don't want to stop!
Anyway....after that I headed up to the area where the workshop would be held. It was quite easy to find, and right across the road from the school was a big park which overlooked the water.
Once I found it, I went back down the hill to walk along by the water. It was really pretty, and the moon was out as well. After that walk, I called it a night.
Marine Tower
The next day was absolutely beautiful weather, although most of the day was spent at the workshop. Once it finished however, I was able to go enjoy the weather a bit.
I took another walk down by the water, but this time I went a little further and found "象の鼻橋" which means the elephant's nose bridge. And it was created to look like that. It had some nice views of the city, the Minato Mirai area as well as the bridge on the other side of the city. It was very uniquely engineered, I think.
Views from Zou no Hana. Click here for link to video 1 and video 2.
Then I continued on to the red brick warehouses (which have been converted from storage areas to hold a variety of shops and restaurants). They were also holding a rather large Octoberfest next to these warehouses.
After that I went over to the area where the ferris wheel was.
I considered riding it, but I decided I would rather go up the super fast elevator in Landmark Tower instead. You get on it on the 3rd floor, and it directly takes you all the way up to the 69th floor, and I don't think it even took 10 seconds to be honest. Actually it was kind of interesting, because before I went up to the 3rd floor I was standing in the entrance of the building answering messages from my coworkers and a friend that I'd been thinking of meeting up with. At that time, on two different occasions Japanese people stopped and started talking to me like they were really worried. They asked me things like, "Are you OK?" "Do you need help finding anything?" "Oh! You're searching for something? Can I help you?" But I was fine. Totally fine. Just answering messages. Thank you for being so proactive in trying to help though! That doesn't happen so often without asking for help.
After the Landmark Tower, I found a couple more places to take pictures before I headed back to the Chinatown area to meet up with my coworkers and possibly join them for dinner.
At that point, they had already started to eat, but they told me they were in Chinatown and sent me a pin to their location. And then I got to have an adventure. Because you see, the pin they sent actually took me out of Chinatown to an area that was really quiet, dark and didn't have any shops or restaurants open other than one lonely little ramen shop with no one in it. So, walked back towards Chinatown and sent a message back to my coworkers. The one who sent the pin was surprised and tried again. And that brought me back to a dark area. So...eventually after getting on the phone, I was able to figure out where they were based on the description they gave: "The street with lanterns". And the one coworker who had been sending me on a scavenger hunt was waiting outside for me. I heard from the other coworkers that he was really upset as this situation was unfolding, and nearly had a panic attack. But I'm fine! Nothing happened! He did get teased a lot after this though. Then, all but one of my coworkers went back to the hotel as they were tired, and the other one wanted to go for a walk. I suggested going down by the water because it was pretty, but he didn't know how to get there exactly, so somehow I ended up going with him. The other coworkers were saying things how he should buy me something to make up for trying to lose me, but somehow it got twisted around to he could at least go on a walk with me. I already walked a lot though, thanks to him. The logic was confusing. It wasn't bad though, because I was able to see the view at night, which is even prettier than at twilight.
Yokohama Chinatown
"The street with lanterns"
Saturday was yet another day for our workshop, and we were learning all kinds of fun and interesting things. There was kind of an unspoken agreement amongst my coworkers that we would meet up at lunch, check in with each other and eat lunch together. The menu for this particular day was curry. And it just so happened that I was sitting next to the coworker who was inadvertently trying to make me get lost the night before. And as we were eating, somehow, don't ask me exactly how, because I don't know, his curry ended up flying of his spoon across the gap between us to land on the table right next to my plate and maybe even a bit on my plate. This caused all kinds of teasing about things like why does he hate me so much and can't he eat properly, what did I ever do to him, etc. He was really embarrassed, more so because it was me again, and went to go get a napkin to clean it up. After that, while he was drinking water, when he put the glass down it splashed all over me. He was incredibly embarrassed. Just water though. Not going to hurt me. I don't really care, but I now apparently have license to tease him whenever. At the end of this day, many people were starting to worry about the super typhoon that was meant to arrive the following day. Flights and trains were being cancelled, so people weren't sure if they could make it home or not. After some discussion between us (coworkers), and a talk on the phone with an important person at our company, it was decided that we would stay an extra night. We also had to change our Shinkansen tickets, which was a bit difficult because we weren't at the station with Shinkansen, and they didn't want to change the ticket because it was bought from JR West, and they were JR East or something like that. Eventually we ended up buying new ones, and people higher up that us will deal with the rest. We also went out for some dinner together again, and bought the "required" souvenirs for our coworkers back at our campuses.
The final day of the workshop ended up being cut a little bit short because they wanted people to get home before the trains stopped service. With the extra time I had, I went for, yes, yet another walk, to another area I hadn't been quite yet. I ended up back at the red brick warehouses, and I found a little restaurant called "Granny Smith's" for my lunch. This restaurant is like my own personal heaven! Everything they had had some kind of apple in it. For my main lunch, I ordered a quiche, which had bacon, apple and pumpkin inside. It was AMAZING!! After that I had some apple pie as well. But for this, I was a little bit less impressed. It wasn't particularly busy, but they made me wait for a really long time, and I think they noticed I was getting impatient because one waiter came over to tell me that they were just warming it up. Ok that's fair. But it took over 20 minutes. And! It wasn't even warm at all!! So what exactly were they doing? Oh well, just think apple-y thoughts. 😜
On the way back, I had been thinking about checking out the Silk Museum, but it started to pour, and I was quickly getting wet, even with my umbrella, so I decided to just head back to the hotel. When I got there, there was something interesting going on...there were so many people sitting around in the lobby, and another group of people with a giant box of tools hovering around one elevator with no elevator, only a big open hole. Apparently it was broken or something. Not something I really had to worry about though as I had switched rooms after booking an extra night, and had been placed on the first floor, so no elevator required!
For our last night, we went to a very nice Chinese restaurant which had mini water-features/ponds between all of the tables and had a really nice atmosphere. One thing that took a good part of our conversation was about the "tingles". It sounds weird if you weren't there, I'm sure. But there were these little bumpy green spherical things that when you put in your mouth, at first nothing happens but then it has a kind of tingling and numbing sensation and it creates a lot of salvia. I asked my Chinese friend about it, and she said they're a kind of pepper that's usually put together with red chili peppers so that there is a hot and numbing sensation at the same time, but she also said Chinese people don't usually eat it because it's too strong. After we finished dinner, 3 of our co-workers went for a bit of a walk, and I sat down with the last one in their hotel lobby and we had a really good discussion about things that we had learned in our workshops, and how we can try to introduce it at work.
The "tingles"
It was fun!
That night the typhoon hit and it was noisy with the wind blowing and blowing things around, but nothing serious happened.
Monday morning we all headed out to catch our Shinkansen back, and although they were delayed due to safety checks, and went slower than usual in some sections, we made it back home safe and sound!
Flooded river after the typhoon, click here for link.
