Pretty much everyone knows the phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words” but the images I saw online before I came do absolutely no justice to my new home. Kobe, while it may be hot and unbearably humid (for me) is ridiculously gorgeous.
It’s a big port city with a lot of shipping going in and out of Osaka Bay so there are cranes dotting the coastal edge of the city and when my flight was landing into Kobe I was surprised at how much it reminded me of the Bay Area.
Kobe and Oakland
The cranes and ships at the water’s edge, the bay, the green hills as backdrop to downtown that you even have to drive through to get to the more suburban part of town on the other side. I didn’t get homesick, but I immediately felt like I would fit right in. My apartment is gorgeous, thanks to my predecessor, and it’s a great size with lots of space for entertaining; which I hope to do in a little while.
My Tatami-floored Living Room
Dining Room
The first event I went to with a lot of the other ALTs was a fireworks show in Osaka. I have no idea why there were fireworks, but Osaka is only a short train ride away so I was down. Osaka was jam-packed full of people but we did find a decent plot of grass to camp out on. I don’t know what’s up with the Japanese there, but they must LOVE tanning because half the Osaks I saw were darker than some of my family members!!! When we walked by one group, they kept saying “sugoi!!!” (cool) a lot. I thought it was so funny that they were so interested in us. It was sugoi, though because I love talking to Japanese people… especially the little kids, they just FREAK OUT when I speak to them on the trains or in a department store…. be it in Japanese or English!
After a few hours, though, the Osaka skies changed and pretty soon lightning we’d seen far off in the distance got closer and closer to us, was accompanied by thunder, and very quickly broke into a rain shower.
The group quickly picked up our tarps and everyone huddled together on the ground trying to stay out of the rain because we hadn’t thought of bringing umbrellas, even though it seems to rain quite often here in Japan during the summer. After a while, though, my legs were hurting from crouching under the tarp, so I just said, “forget it” and came out from under the tarp and stood in the rain for a while and soon after that the fireworks started (yeah, they did them anyway, rain and all) then everyone else just stood in little clusters under different tarps watching the show. I’ve never watched a fireworks show in the rain and I was soaked, but it was AWESOME!
After the show was over, a few of us wanted to go do karaoke but didn’t want to wait in the giant line of people exiting the place, so we scaled a wall, ran down a grassy slope that was slicker than normal because of the rain, and headed back to Kobe and belted out some awesome tunes. Climbing that wall I felt like someone crossing a border wall or something because it was pretty steep, we all got kinda messy, but it was probably one of the best experiences I’ve ever had.
The rest of the week was relatively mild: hoofing it all over Sannomiya and downtown Kobe learning where stuff is, touring a jr. high school, and 4 straight days of Japanese lessons. I also had a monstrously difficult banking situation for several days that got resolved the other day, but it made me angry because no one at any bank branch at home explained international banking laws to me and kept saying that things would be the same in both countries, even after I told several people that I would be moving out of the country and would not be doing many transactions from the States. Stupid bank.
There was also a food party hosted by one of the ALTs in my neighborhood. The great thing about Kobe is that there is a fantastic cultural mix, so there are people not only from the States, but also from Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad & Tobago, and more. Since there are so many different people here, another girl from the States and myself decided to introduce people to the S’more.
The Smore
First, I’d asked if people from other countries knew what it was. When I explained that it was melted marshmallow on top of a bit of chocolate sandwiched between two graham crackers there were some mixed reactions. Then after explaining to them what a graham cracker was, some people said it sounded awfully sugary, which, admittedly, it is. But I also explained that most people generally only have one s’more in a single sitting.
At the party I thought, “Hey, maybe this is not the greatest stereotype to reinforce about people from the States: that we love sugary snacks that could easily make you diabetic. But that was before an Aussie guy walked in with a plate of “Fairy Bread” and the girl from New Zealand shrieked in delight.
Fairy Bread... an Aussie and Kiwi favorite
Everyone from the U.S. was like, “what the *heck* is ‘Fairy Bread’?” Basically it’s a piece of buttered bread with colored sprinkles on it. It’s good, but I laughed so hard when bread-lovers talked about how you’d be the most popular kid in elementary school if your mom brought in Fairy Bread for snacks or something. No one from back home would even try to bring s’mores as a class snack because everyone sort of agreed it was just too much sugar! But it was hilarious.
That incident is one of the many examples of why I know I’m gonna like it here *humming Annie soundtrack* People seem really easy to get along with here. Not everyone gets along with everyone else, but I haven’t had any problems, so yay!
Today I’m just going to keep in mellow, probably stay in my neighborhood, do laundry, watch a movie, etc. Hopefully I can update soon; next week is summer school and I know that’s going to be hilarious.
P.S. Here’s a link to some pictures I took with my phone.
