Sannomiya & Kobe Harborland

I went to Sannomiya (三宮) and Kobe Harborland (神戸ハーバーランド) with friends around a month ago, though I'm finally getting a chance to post about it now. I wanted to post about it immediately after the day, but that obviously never happened. Since I took so many photos on the day, I figured I'd still write about it. It was a great day, to say the least.

My friends and I decided to go to Sannomiya for the day and look around the place together. Sannomiya is located in the heart of Kobe, and is only around 30 minutes away by train from where I live. Since it's the last train stop on my train line, it's as easy as getting on the train and getting off at the last stop. We initially didn't have a plan for the day and wanted to just explore the area, so we went with the flow. Once we all got together at the station, we moved on to our first destination, Ikuta shrine (生田神社). My host family had actually already taken me to this shrine on the very first day we met, though I didn't realise until I got there. Regardless, I took photos.

Cute selfie because we're cute

My beautiful the sun is blinding me face

We were starving by the time we finished up at the shrine, so we went on a hunt for lunch. This is probably one of the most unflattering angles of my face. That blob on the bottom left, yes, that's me. Lunch was decent, though we ended up getting an alcoholic drink with our food, despite it being labelled as "juice". Warning: juice is not juice in Japan.

We took a little stroll down China town (南京町) while we were in the area and ate some fab street food.

Since the whole day itself was pretty spontaneous, one of us suggested going to Kobe Harborland since there was apparently a Ghibli store at the place. Since you can't possibly say no to Ghibli, we walked all the way to Harborland. Behold, lots of pretty pictures.

This is the Kobe Port Tower (神戸ポートタワー) , which is famous for being one of Kobe's symbols.
It stands at 108 metres high.

Another cute selfie #dontjudge

We ended up finding the Ghibli store inside the little shopping complex. I could have easily bought nearly everything in that store, but I restrained myself reluctantly. I did buy 2 totoro clear files since I didn't want to leave the store empty handed. So much totoro in that store, I just nope. I ended up walking out of that store as soon as I bought my things, for fear of wanting to buy more. Some people ended up leaving after that, so it was only me and 2 other friends who chose to stay back. Now that I think about it, it was probably the better option. I don't remember how long we were there for, but we walked around a bit more and took lots of photos until the sun finally went down.

The sun eventually went down and the whole place lit up. Three of us stayed back that day, so we wandered around the entire complex taking photos, and admiring the bright lights. The place was a lot prettier at night, in my opinion. We sat down after a while, just to take a break and admire the view. I'd definitely recommend visiting Harborland at night!

The prettiest ferris wheel! It also changed colours from time to time.

While we were sitting down and having a chat, we all came to the conclusion that it was the perfect occasion for alcohol. There ended up being a huge tax-free shop within walking distance from where we were, so we each bought a couple of drinks and some snacks to snack on. Theres nothing better than chilling with friends, drinking, and admiring a fab view. It just seemed right.

Selfie #193749174. You probably can't tell, but at this point we were all slightly intoxicated and feeling it. 

I don't remember how long we sat there, but we realised it was already getting late so we decided to head home. At that point, all I wanted to do was crawl into my bed and not wake up. Still, I knew we had to make the trip home. Just the thought of going home and having to climb up the steep mountain to my house already put me off. I think if anything, the alcohol actually made the hike back home somewhat bearable. I was still able to take photos on our way out, so I was more than okay after drinking.

All in all, it was a great day and it ended up being a memorable night!

WEEK 2/3: First Week Of Class + Osaka

I'm finally getting a chance to sit down and write this! I've either been too busy or close to passing out from exhaustion every day so far, so it's been a bit difficult to find some time for myself. I thought I may as well use this time now, while I have it.

Since the first week was just purely orientation and settling in, classes didn't begin until the week after. We went through the process of choosing subjects and organising our timetables, so last week we all got a chance to sit in and get a feel of each subject before everything gets finalised. Fortunately for me, and my housemate, we both have Mondays off. I was close to having just one class on Monday, but I figured it wasn't worth the strenuous travel to and from school. This is considered strenuous, coming from a person who originally lived 5 to 10 minutes away from school. It's just the fact that either way I go, I'm made to walk uphill. In fact, I suddenly miss the flat roads back in Melbourne. Too bad I took them for granted. So far though, it looks like I have 5 subjects in total this semester, and 4 days of class Tuesday to Friday. Which essentially means 3 day weekend yeye!

Despite only being here for 3 weeks, I've only had 3 days of pure rest so far. My host family took me to Sannomiya in Kobe on the very first day, then I went again not too long ago with friends. I then went to Dotonbori and Namba in Osaka just in the first week of being in Japan. I wanted to make seperate posts for each visit, but I've been so busy and it might just be easier to summarise some of it in this post and chuck some photos in since I took so many.

I went to Osaka (大阪) on my first weekend in Japan. My housemate is a mega pokemon fan so she really wanted to visit the Pokemon Centre (ポケモンセンター). I didn't complain, of course.

Two giant pikachus came out of nowhere all of a sudden and started dancing with the crowd, in the middle of the store. I just happened to be standing pretty close at the time, so I was able to get a good view. There was staff encouraging the crowd to join in and dance along, but we were all pretty much preoccupied with getting good shots of the pikachus. As you do.

We met up with some other friends later that day and took a train to Namba (難波), then walked to Dotonbori (道頓堀). As expected, it was really crowded. Dotonbori is like the ultimate tourist spot in Osaka, as far as I know.

We stopped over at a little restaurant for dinner once it got later in the day. We ordered more, but we started eating immediately after taking our foodporn shots. There was another table for our other friends, not in the picture.

We ended up spending pretty much the whole day in Osaka just walking around, taking photos, and sight-seeing. I also met some pretty cool people that day and made new friends. We also ended up spending some time in a really big game centre with lots of levels full of different games, and checking out some anime/manga stores. It was a fab day overall. Seeing as how it's so easy to get to these places from where I live now, this definitely won't be the last time I pay a visit.