Kobe

As it has been every day here so far, it was overcast as we made our way back to the pandemonious labyrinth of the Osaka train station. Kobe turned out to be nearly a suburb of Osaka, so we got there very quickly. As proved to be a problem repeatedly throughout the trip, we arrived well before the check-in time at the hotel. We were able to chew up a decent chunk of time by trying to find the blasted hotel.

As I've mentioned previously, I pride myself on my ability to keep my bearings and to know where I am. When I am lost or disoriented, I become what some might call "agitated." Others might prefer "irritable jerk." Potaytoe/pohtahtoe. We got off at the correct subway station and the ultra-vague directions said exit the west exit, take a right and the hotel was less than a minute away and obvious. Osaka, perplexing as it was, is at least, in some small way, prepared dto accept it gets Western tourists. Confusing as they are, Osaka at least had English on signs and maps.

Kobe? No way, Jose. Using a map that seemed representative more of a thought of a dream of an idea of a cartographical device, we exited what I could only guess was the west exit (but later discovered was the west exit of the east gate of the central terminal) into rain, finally. Perfect. I looked at the hotel-provided map. Nothing matched. I checked to make sure it was for the right city. It said it was. Confused and aggravated, I went with faith, left the girls under an overhand, and walked in the rain to the right, hoping against hope the hotel would magically appear.

I returned five minutes later in a foul temper. Jana was content to smoke a cigarette, but mom, in a tragically self-defeating case of recognizing I was frustrated to the point of maniacal fury, attempted to help by talking through the directions I had. I promptly tore her head off. "I'm following the directions! I'm following the map! Non of the @#$! damn streets are labled in Western script and the map is complete @#!!"

Rather than sit under an overhang at the train station, where I was certain the hotel wasn't, I barked at the girls to follow me as I chased my (accurate it turned out) hunch we weren't at the west exit. None of us were happy as we lugged our bags in the light rain. Thoroughly unconvinced I had any idea that I knew where I was going, I barked, yet again, at the girls that we were taking a taxi.

The myth in America is that the Japanese are smarter than us, or, at the very least, more disciplined in their studies, and since I'm pretty sure they take 12 years of English in school (though where I got that I have no idea) led me to believe that communicating wouldn't be overly difficult without knowing a lick of their language. W.R.O.N.G. No doubt my pronunciation of the address was atrocious, but the profusely apologetic cabbie couldn't understand me when I gave him the name and address of the hotel. Knowing my handwriting is horrible, I printed out in my most careful block lettering the name and address. Didn't work. He pulled out his cell phone, blabbered something quickly into it, and then handed it to me.

"Hello?" I said.

"Hai!" said a heavily-accented voice. "Hello!"

"I want to go to the (hotel name)?" I said, a bit perplexed.

"Hai! Hand phone back to driver."

I did. A spot more blabbering, then he drove us three blocks east, four blocks north, four blocks west, three blocks south, and one block east to the hotel. To go to the hotel one block away from the taxi stand, I'd paid $8. My attitude was sparkling. As we'd still managed to get there early, we couldn't check in, but we left our bags with the concierge. I parked my grumpy self at a coffee shop to let my fury subside, while the girls wandered around.

Since we didn't come to Kobe to see anything, there's not so much to say about the sights. Obviously, Kobe is known for it's beef. We ate at a steak house. It was heavenly. Other than that though, I tried to take in a quintessentially modern Japanese city (Kobe having been rebuilt almost from scratch after the '95 quake). First and foremost, and I have no idea why, the women of Kobe were far better looking, uniformly, than any other place we'v e been. I don't typically have a thing for Japanese women, but I nearly snapped my neck whipping around to see the Nipponese goddesses all around. Even lowly store clerks were strikingly beautiful. It was bizarrely movie-like how everyone was pretty. Of course, I wasn't impressing any of the Kobe beauties what with speaking only a mutilated "Hai!" and "Domo arigato!" and cavorting around with mom and Jana. I also wasn't helping my cause by nearly running many of them over.

I hate the English driving system. Hate it. I've driven in England and Ireland and it was nerve-wracking the entire time. I didn't grow accustomed to the change. I had to focus the whole time to make sure I didn't drive into oncoming traffic any time I made a turn. Japan follows the English system. Sure, I wasn't driving, and thankfully so (note: I'd recommend those who can't read the various Japanese scripts not attempt driving there either), but the sides people drive on translate to what side of the sidewalk they walk on. I'd start looking around at the shops and signs and unwittingly, reflexively veer to the wrong side of the sidewalk and force the politely confused locals ("Why doesn't the gaijin walk on the correct side?") to pour around me. There are 180 million or so Japanese. The side walks are typically crowded. Gunking up the flow was embarrassing, but, sadly, frequent.

Kobe wasn't particularly different from any other big city I've been to. Tall, mostly drab buildings and too many people, but when Jana and I went out to explore after dinner, the city was transformed. Stereotypical lights and signs lit up all over the place, but instead of being garish as I'd figured they'd be, they lent a dreamlike quality as we took in the atmosphere of the city.

There are a great many aspects of Japanese culture, particularly when it attempts to fuse with Western culture, that just leave me perplexed. Thus it was that I was confounded when I walked past a store with an ad featuring a 50 or 60yo Japanese woman in some sort of latex maid's outfit with a heart shape cut out of the chest to show cleavage. I stopped in my tracks. What in the hell was THAT ad for? Jana had independently stopped to look at another ad on the building and called out, "Andre! Check this out!" It was a picture of the same old lady in a miniskirt looking coyly over her shoulder and seductively fingering the hem of the miniskirt. I was beyond confused until I looked at the store more carefully. It was a porn shop. She, I can only surmise, is a porn star. Some elements of this culture need to be chalked up as a mistake, taken out back, shot, and buried in an unmarked grave.