Today was our second totally free day of the trip. A few of us decided to sleep a little late and then make it to the internet cafe for about an hour. In response to a comment from a reader of my site, fanny packs are sexy. ‘Nuff said.

After the leaving Kameoka, we stopped in Osaka for lunch on the way to Kobe. For lunch I had a beef curry meal which again was excellent if a little bland compared to some of the other curries I’ve tasted. In the train station I also found a Swiss konditorei and had an excellent (if expensive, ¥500) piece of chocolate cake.

After lunch we headed to Kobe. According to Fodors, Kobe is the home to almost 70,000 westerners so it has more a European feel. We did see a few more foreigners than normal but it didn’t seem dominated by them.

Another nice thing about Kobe is there is a huge covered shopping center where most things can be found in Kobe called Moto-machi, our destination for the day. Supposedly, there is a section that has Japanese antiques that several of us wanted to see. We followed the instructions that we had to Moto-machi and found a long tunnel right under the main train track that was filled with dozens of little shops of various types. We walked along the way but didn’t see much that we were interested in. It all seemed like clothes, toys, and other bric-a-brac with a sprinkling of very expensive Japanese arts shops and one antique military memorabilia shop with old Imperial Army uniforms and SS uniform on display. A store of an “adult” nature with many pieces of, uh, gear on display, right next to a toy store. Very strange.

As we walked along the whole length of these tunnels, we didn’t see much we wanted so we walked back to the train station on the north side of the tracks. There were several food stores along the way including a candy shop were I managed to find a sampler pack of RitterSport.

It turns out that with only a few hours left, we had realized we had missed Moto-machi proper which was on the south side and only saw the old leftovers. Moto-machi was actually very nice. We a big hunk of our time in the English section of bookstore and did a little catching up with what’s happening in the world. The shops in Moto-machi were very nice with a wide variety of clothes, electronics, food, and other things but only Rebecca scored a shopping victory with a pair of pink sparkly shoes. Hooray for her.

We also found something we hadn’t seen much of in Japan, pizza. Near the mouth of Moto-machi was a Canadian pizza place with all the usual stuff you see on pizza, corn, little fish, etc. We stayed with something more traditional, cheese, pepperoni, tomatoes, and green peppers, but no Canadian bacon. In spite of that, it was still pretty good.

At this point we had run out of time at Kobe. We still had to pack for our trip to Tokyo the next day. I will attempt to put five days of clothes, including nice clothes for three business trips, into a carry-on bag and a backpack. Not much of challenge for me at this point. Theoretically, if I have enough Woolite I can live off only one change of clothes.

Tomorrow, Tokyo!