Our Latest Visitor

For the long weekend this week (four days!) I make plans with Jamie Suter - one of the long standing Program Assistants I had the benefit of working with at Oregon State University. Jamie had moved to Japan to teach in the JET program a year before I came, so she is just finishing her second year now. We had been in vague contact for a while but hand't ever managed to get together since I had arrived in Japan. This was the last good weekend, though, so we made it happen. Jamie came all the way from Ojiya, a country town a ways north of Tokyo, and we spent the weekend having fun in Kobe and Osaka.

Jamie arrived Thursday late afternoon, so Thursday was spent mostly just walking around the (very rainy) city, then eating dinner downtown and going to karaoke.

Friday we got a little more creative.

First, we went out to my school so Jamie could see where I work. After that, we ate lunch at the awesome vegetarian restaurant in town and then headed to the cat cafe. I posted pictures of this before and if I ever get pictures from Jamie I will post the more recent set. Imagine the lady being swarmed by cats and then imagine its me in the middle of the cats and the cats are surrounded by Japanese highschoolers taking pictures. You get the idea. We jumped in early with the treats this time around and that really did make the experience more fun. The cats warmed up to us more than last time, too. I assume because they were hoping we still had a few treats hidden in our pockets or something.

After the kitties, we headed to Harborland and checked out tickets to ride the pink pirate ship around the bay. It turned out the we had missed the last normal ride and the very final ride of the evening would take a different route out to the Kobe airport and back. It was a longer trip, but the price was the same, so we went for it. Once the ship was back, we climbed on board. I have a poor quality picture of the boat (it was dark and my phone doesn't take good night shots) but you get the idea. To really get the idea look at the picture and play "My Heart Will Go On" from titanic loud and on repeat. We could sit in the bottom level, the top level, or walk out onto the deck on the very top (where it was crazy cold and windy). We generally stayed up top until we couldn't take it anymore and then retreated to the second story to look out the windows instead.

The trip was fun (once we learned to block out the music). We got to see my school on Port Island (from the water point of view). We also got to see the insanely large shipping vessel that's been parked outside the MOL shipping center next door to our school for the last week. Its 6-7 stories tall in the center and just massive. It kind of scared me when I first noticed it. Its even bigger when you are in a small pink pirate ship. As an unexpected bonus, we also got to see the Akashi-Kaikyou Bridge that goes from that goes out to Awaji Island. It is currently the longest suspension bridge in the world. At 1,991 meters its pretty impressive. It was all lit up in rainbow colors so it was easy to see at night.

Finally, on the way home, we had a beautiful view of Kobe all lit up. I really should have brought my good camera. The camera phone has its downsides.

Saturday was spent wandering around Osaka and enjoying the aquarium. (They have capybara! Huh?) The highlight of Sunday for me was watching the opening ceremony for the Olympics and making not-takoyaki at the end. Jamie is vegetarian, so she wasn't so excited about eating octopus balls. Unfortunately, we have this awesome takoyaki pan that gets far too little use, so we compromised. We made octopus balls with mochi and cheese inside instead of octopus. It was surprisingly delicious. We are ever honing our takoyaki skills.

We also slipped in some Go, SET and whiskey to round out the evening.