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Apparently, this is a very popular wall of signs for tourists.  I followed the crowd and snapped this picture.

Looks like a certain somewhat famous tower in Tokyo, doesn’t it?

A view of Mt. Fuji from afar.

Here’s the marquee of the Capital Theatre in Port Hope.

Here are some pictures of houses with their Christmas lights:

Autumn is finally here!

I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves…

A mere 300 kilometers from the house to Ooarai Sun Beach.   Here’s how it looked just after sunrise.

Small but getting bigger.  At around 7 am, the crew and I got in the water.  The waves were a reasonable size and the new fins seemed to work well.  Caught lots of waves in the morning.

In the afternoon, the waves got smaller again.  During my afternoon break I took these:

A full day of surfing action.

Da Crew:

A little bit blurry because of the light rain.

Looking forward to the next surf meet!!

While having a few drinks and appetizers in the hotel lounge, I looked at a Kobe guidebook.  It mentioned that there are many western houses that are popular with Japanese tourists, but that the only place worth seeing is this shrine.  Here are a few pictures:

We were quite disappointed to be honest.  Perhaps because we live in Japan, we are jaded tourists?  Near this shrine is Urako House.  Urako House is a popular site for Japanese tourists.  Apparently it was originally a rental house for wealthy foreigners.  The entry for this museum is 1,000 so we decided to pass on it.  However, we took this picture at the entrance:

Impressive isn’t it?

It was quite hot so I decided to take a break with this statue of a shirtless man playing a saxophone.

What were they thinking when they put this statue here?

Finally we visited the harbour.  Here is a picture of Port Tower and the Kobe Maritime Museum.  (The trusty cynical guide book stated that the outside of the museum was the most interesting part.  We questioned this but we didn’t have time to see for ourselves).

We also saw this life-sized replica of the Santa Maria, one of Columbus’ ships.

Why this replica is in Kobe beats me.

Finally, this is the famous? cafe* Fish!

I wonder why it is called cafe* Fish!?  and why is there an asterisk in the name?  It was closed because of a private function so we couldn’t find out why. 

Lots of places to see in Kobe – to see everything, you’ll need at least 2 full days.  Maybe we’ll have a chance to go again sometime.

After visiting Nunobiki Herb Garden, we decided to hike back up the mountain to see a few waterfalls.  (It seems that most people buy one way tickets and walk back down).  Saves time and saves money – wait, that reminds me of…

How exactly does eating at Sukiya save time and money?  Wouldn’t you save money by cooking at home or eating at a cheaper fastfood restuarant?  Anyways, back to the topic at hand…waterfalls…

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On the day after my birthday, we went sightseeing in Kobe.  The first place we visited was Nunobiki Herb Garden.  It is a 40-acre herb garden located on the top of Mount Rokko.  It has more than 200 varieties of herbs.  You can take a ski lift / ropeway or hike up the mountain from Kobe station to here.  (Which did we do?  Yep, we chose the quicker of the two)

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This year we spent my birthday in Kobe.  This was our first time to go siteseeing in Kobe city.

We stayed at a great hotel near Kobe station with a wonderful view of the city and the harbour.

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The last place we visited in Nagasaki was Soufuku-ji. This is a temple that was built by a Chinese monk in 1692.  Two of the buildings have been designated as national treasures.

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We also visited Confucius Shrine (Kyoushi-byo) – it is the only shrine dedicated to Confucius outside of China that was built by Chinese.  The original shrine was built in 1893 but was destroyed by the bombings of the Second World War.  The shrine was completed renovated in 1982.

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