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The above picture was taken just before 6 am this morning.  I was surprised that I was able to take this picture without any surfers.

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Like I mentioned in a previous post, days that I can see Mt. Fuji before going to beach seem to be good surfing days.  It’s a little blurry but here’s a picture of Mt. Fuji at 4:45 am today:

The big question is - Would the waves be as nice as yesterday’s?

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Recently the winds have been strong, so we decided to meet a little bit earlier than usual.  When I stepped out of the apartment, I glanced to see if I could see Mt. Fuji.  Surprisingly, I could see it.

For some reason, I think it is good luck to be able to see Mt. Fuji before going to the beach…

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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.

Today was my seventh time to surf at Yoshida - not bad considering that I was quite busy with work during the first part of the official beach season.  (FYI, the official season is from the last weekend of June until the last weekend of August).

Typhoon 11 has completely passed by Shizuoka now, so I figured that it would be just a regular day at the surf office today….

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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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It has been quite some time since a typhoon passed close enough to make some waves in the Shizuoka area.  Here’s what the wave forecast looked like for east Japan this morning:

Even without knowing exactly where we live, you can see that most of eastern Japan was expecting some larger than average waves.

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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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We decided to go to Tatadohama.  It is in the middle of the Ubon holidays, so we didn’t know what the traffic and the crowds would be like.  We left our house at around 11:30 pm and arrived at around 2:30 am.  As expected, the parking lot was almost full - we got the last parking spot - lucky!  It was a good spot near the edge of the paved parking lot across from the beach.  We tried to get a few hours of sleep…

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