On Tuesday and Wednesday last week, Yannik and I went to Kobe together, to visit Anju and Flo, who are also studying abroad right now. Although we missed one train in Umeda station in Osaka, we still made it in time  and arrived there at short past 1 in the afternoon. Our first discovery was a bakery, which called itself Köln (or Cologne in English), had a belgian flag above their door and was selling “Hausgebacken Brot”. It would’ve nearly felt like home, if these small inconsistencies weren’t that blatant ^^ To get to Flo’s and Anju’s dormitory, we had to do a 25-30 minutes-hike up the hill and as it was quite warm and humid and we were a bit packed with things it wasn’t the most pleasant hike I’ve ever done. Still, on top you have an amazing view over the city… or would have, if it wouldn’t have been so cloudy that day :/ But we didn’t care that much about it and startet our walk down to another train station (visiting the campus on the way), where we took our train to Sannomiya station and began our sightseeing-tour.

Most of you will remember, that I’ve also been to Kobe last year and we visited mostly the same spots: China-town, tha harbour, the Port Tower and the Mosaic Center. Down at the port, we met a guy, who was selling sausages and beer and instantly was talking about how famous his beer was and that it’s even well-known in Germany. We had to correct him a little bit on that part, although yes, Asahi is known in Germany, just not that well. His sausages were actually pretty small and coated in a sweat kind of fried bakery, which tasted a bit weird, to say it in a good way. Actually I don’t want to eat that again anytime soon ^^” We also visited the remnants of the old port, which was destroyed by the great Hanshin-Earthquake in 1995, which have sunk 1 or more meters during the catastrophic event. You can see it in one of the pictures below. Our last sightseeing-point was the Mosaic shopping center and Harbour Land next to it, both of which are really nice places to hang out and have some fun. Yannik and Flo even entered the gaming hall and shot down some terminators – you should’ve seen their concentrated looks When the evening came and we still were there, the lights turned to life in the harbour and created a beautiful scenery, even more beautiful than Osaka in my opinion, but I might be biased ^^

Parts of the old harbour.

The harbour in the evening – a beautiful image

The illuminated Port Tower.

So we walked back from the port through the now illuminated city and went to get some tabenomihodai, which is basically an all you can drink and eat offer in some restaurants. After some search, we found one, that only costed like 2300Yen, which is really cheap! Together we ate 13 pizzas, 2 plates of pasta and some appetizers before that – man, we  stuffed in the end xD Couple that with 8 drinks per person and the shop might stop offering that to foreigners very soon. If not, we’ll go there again, next time

Eating a shitload of food – the plates startet to rise

On Wednesday, Yannik, Flo and I went to Port Island which is, as the name says, a big island in the port area of Kobe and visited a big rock festival, called Comin’ Kobe. It’s a yearly event, where donations for benificial actions are collected – this year obviously for the people, who had suffered under the events of the 11th of March in Japan. They had 5 stages spread all over a big area, coupled with a lot of stands and additional events (even wrestling ). We spent the whole afternoon there and listened to many different bands (although too many of them were a bit too metal-y for my taste) and had a great time there. Some fans where even creating sand storms by their dance moves, so we had to cover our mouths and noses with towels to be save from that ^^

In the main concert hall with the biggest stage of the festival. Some japanese band is playing, but they weren’t hardcore enough for Flo and Yannik

Wrestling \o/

After these two days, Yannik and I returned to Osaka exhausted and tired, but these were two days well spent. I’d actually even say, that Kobe is my favourite city in Japan and should I live there in the future (who knows?), I’d definitely like to have my place there

Insider: Der große Schottinello aus Japan?!