Kobe

Another city which makes up the Kansai region (along with Osaka and Kyoto) is Kobe. It is40 minutes on the cheap/slow train from Osaka. Its famous food is beef, which is supposedly the best in the world, although Si-yieng and Kumo-chan (fellow exhange students,) said it was berri derishasu but actually the same as any other beef they have had. I didn't try it.

Kobe is much more famous for the devastating earthquake which occurred in 1995 .

There is a small section of the port which has been preserved as a reminder of the damage left behind. Apart from that there are no signs. It was really sad to see it and think about all the victims, especially when I think about the earthquake on the 11^th. Since then the city has not done badly and is now prosperous.

There were lots of cute little things to see like the cute roadworks and salad express bus. It could have been a food delivery van or something but it was a coach for people.

This is Kobe tower and a white thing. At the harbour the weather changed from sunny to snowy and it was absolutely freezing.
This is Veri, touching the statue of a girl on a dolphin.
Just as the snow stopped, we came across this lovely shrine in the city centre, but because I'd left my nice warm coat in England, it started hailing.

we went to see a famous waterfall which is featured in loads of classical literature. Unfortunately there was not much water but never mind. Imagine a beautiful cascade. Pretty isn't it.

From the left: Me, Kumo-chan, Si-yieng and Veri.

Kobe is also famous for the view at night. Along with Hakodate in the north and Nagasaki in the south they make up the 3 famous night views. Unfortunately the place you're supposed to view it from was closed so we walked back into town and went up the city hall building and waited for it to get dark.

Osaka- Kitchen of Japan

The first stop on my trip was Osaka. Osaka is the 3^rd biggest city after Tokyo and Yokohama, although considering Yokohama is rubbish it is the 2^nd as far as I'm concerned. Me and Veri went on the night-bus, which meant I wouldn't sleep but that was fine as I was still jet-lagged after coming back from England. Even though it's too dark to read, I found that 8 hours went surprisingly quickly. My first impressions of the city weren't great- a very confusing train station and an empty street supposedly the main shopping street. The shops don't seem to open until 10 and luckily my first impressions were wrong. My friend had also told me that there isn't actually much to see in Osaka, more things to eat, which is where it gets the name "Kitchen of Japan."

Our hostel was in Ame-mura which is short for American Village. This is because there used to be shops after the war selling American clothes. Now it seems to be the cool bit of town. Big glasses are in, but their lenses are out as your false eyelashes will get mascara on them.

The colours are much brighter than those in Tokyo which was refreshing. The people were also a refreshing change-straight talking, passionate and easily wound up.

Along with pretty much everywhere in Japan, Osaka has a speciality food. In this case it is Okonomiyaki which I can only describe as a pancake/omelette with cabbage in it (and fish and shrimps if you like) topped off with brown sauce and mayonaise. It sounds nasty but it's really nice and cheap and easy to make.

Osaka is famous for a big crab shop which smells horrible (in my opinion) which has a big mechanical crab on the outside.

The other famous sight is Osaka-jo (castle.) This is is a reconstruction as it was probably destroyed either during civil war, WW2 or a fire, I can't remember what happened to which castle. This seems to have happened a lot in Japan. The reconstruction is complete with lift and wheelchair access which I'm sure the Shogun would have installed first time round if his architecht had spent a bit more time on his plans.

At the castle, we had a conversation with 2 Japanese secondary schoolgirls who were convinced that Veri is a model and that I am just like the real Harry Potter and or Spiderman. The castle was also where I first tried Osaka's other famous food- Takoyaki or bits of octopus in fried balls of batter. It was chewy and I burned my tongue so I won't have it again.

This running man is also famous apparently.

I personally love Osaka, because I was finally able to photograph dogs in a pram:

In fact, I was so pleased, I decided to milk it a bit:

We went to a nice shrine a short train ride away, which predates Chinese Buddhist influence which was interesting. I bought a charm for safe travel from there as it was pretty and it worked quite well for getting me back to the UK safely, although now that I read it again it is for safe boat travel haha.

Earthquake

Between 20 and 25 percent of the world's earthquakes take place in Japan, so you can say that they occur fairly often there. That doesn't mean that they were prepared for anything like what happened last Friday.

The purple bit shows areas badly affected by the tsunami and the grey circle around Fukushima is the 20km exclusion zone. The Foreign Commonwealth Office 80km exclusion zone did not reach as far as Tokyo. As you can see I was very lucky to be at the other end of the country and on a completely different island. I was also very lucky because everyone who I know in Japan was safe.

I didn't really know what to do other than to hang around in the south until things became safer. In the end it became clear that I should leave the country for a while until things settle down and Newcastle offered to pay for us to come home so I had my passport sent in the post from Tokyo down to Hiroshima (still a long long way from the power plant,) and then I could make plans to fly back home. I ended up flying from Osaka Kansai airport via Seoul so that I didn't need to return to Tokyo. The stories I was hearing were quite scary, with hardly any trains running, regulated blackouts and food shortages. That is why I have come home without my computer, phone or indeed anything useful, but I don't mind this as I managed to get home safely. As I intend on returning though, this shouldn't be a problem, and If I am unable to return, my Japanese uni has said it will forward my things home.

My heart goes out to all the people in Japan who are going through hell right now and I hope that as many people as possible are recovered from the wreckage. I also hope that the brave efforts of the teams working on the power plant pay off and everyone is safe again.

I have a huge backlog of blogging to do so that will hopefully take my mind off the situation.