Kobe Trip- Sannomiya

The Kobe trip actually happened first so ignore that I wrote the Kyoto post first. On Saturday I met up with my friends Sonya and Celest. They had moved to Japan sometime around last October to get jobs. Their free spirited nature took them all around Japan and Korea and they were on their way back to where they are currently staying when we decided to meet up and catch up. They are staying with friends in Kobe and I decided it would be fun to go out there and see what's around. So I dragged Emily and John along for a little adventure. We got completely 'lost' on the way there according to John, but my definition of lost is getting off at the wrong station or going in the wrong direction. We merely just couldn't read the map correctly and took a long way there. We met up with Sonya and Celest in Sannomiya. Sannomiya is in a busy part of Kobe and is prob the only famous thing about it. Kobe is the 'gangster/ yakuza' area of Japan.. but you really couldn't tell - or at least I couldn't. Under Sannomiya station there is a HUUUUUUUUUUGE indoor shopping district. And I don't want to say mall either, because the word mall implies a limited enclosed space. It was big and it lasted for blocks. We did a little window shopping there and decided to go to the famous Sweets Paradise for lunch. All you can eat cake and dessert stuff. you get 70 mins to stuff your face full of whatever you like. There was also normal food like rice and different kinds of noodles in case you needed real food, but the sweets were enough for anyone to take a bite out of. After that we walked to Kobe's China Town. It is something like a week afer the Chinese New Year (honestly I have no idea) so there were a lot of people. We had the famous Chinese meat buns, that Japanese people love, and I love as well! We walked around and decided we wanted to walk to the Kobe Earthquake memorial. On the way out however, we were randomly pushed to the side very abruptly and a dragon parade kind of came.. right to us. The dragon was going inside all the stores to give them good luck... but they were in our way. I uploaded a small clip of what I am talking about on my facebook. So go look for it! Anyhow we made our way over to the memorial. It is an outside memorial with a section of the old damaged port encased so you can look at it. That area of Kobe was the most heavily damaged and the pictures/movies in the memorial definitly showed that. I took a pic of the damaged section and the new bright lighted city in the background. Which ca also be found on my facebook. Kobe reminded me very much of Baltimore, despite being the only foreigners around, and it was really nice to 'get away', from what I don't know, but it was a nice feeling nontheless.