Kobe!

Yesterday I went to Kobe, mainly for another Pecha Kucha night, but I also did some sightseeing.

Kobe is quite close to Kyoto, but those two cities are very different; the first being a business, culture-mix and harbour city, the second old, high-class, old capital type of atmosphere city. As much as I've come to love Kyoto, my trip to Kobe was quite refreshing. I wandered through the various shopping arcades in the Sannomiya district (I bought 2 pairs of tabi for 500yen! I still can't believe it!) and finally I found a mini China-town (Nankinmachi). It was great; I especially loved all those small stalls with different types of food. I had a manjuu (a steamed bun with meat filling; by the way, it was the first time in weeks that I ate meat!) and zhimaqu (a type of chinese pastry made of rice, sweet bean paste and sesame seeds) I also encoutered some... interesting shops selling "weird stuff" (and that's to put it mildly). First, I came eye-to-eye with gay-santa-football fan Bruce Lee:
Than I found perfect presents for my friends:
YES, that is real.
After spending way too much time in China Town I went to the harbour; it was quite cold, so I ran away pretty fast, but I managed to take some pictures when the light was nice:
After walking around the city for a few hours I took a train to Nishinomiya where the Pecha Kucha Night was taking place and I gave a short speech about my life as an intern student in Tondaya. It was cold outside and warm inside, so my face got all red - everybody thought I was nervous, but that was just the damn heat! Oh, OK, I may have been a little bit nervous...
Other presentations that night were very interesting; everybody was great and I enjoyed this PKN a lot. A pity I won't be there for the next one; it's a week after I'm going back home.

It seems that this week will be quite interesting - lots of parties and good food, so I'm excited. Mindy invited me to a Christmas party at her tea teacher's shop; this will be my first Christmas outside Poland, so I'm a bit down, but then again I always welcome new experiences.