Thursday, February 19, 2009

When the land is unstable it's time to get on a boat.

It has been brought to my attention that I've neglected my blog for nearly three weeks again. Both work and home life have been pretty busy which doesn't leave a lot of time for adventuring, photographing, or writing. As I think I've mentioned before (golly, I hope I've mentioned this before...) I've been thinking of moving to Osaka for the next "contract year" (starting in April.) I've been doing a lot of internet research along with reading some good old-fashioned maps and doing a bit of leg work. One of the places my search took me was a neighborhood called Bentencho which is home to the Osaka's transportation museum (sponsored by JR [Japan Rail]) which is oddly biased to rail transit (Hmmm...) The plan for last "weekend" was to take a break from my search and visit Mt. Koya (Japan's holy mountain, mentioned in previous posts.) Unfortunately the trip was canceled at the last minute as the snow we wanted to see turned out to be a cold rain instead.

Last Friday and Saturday saw temperatures in the 60's (F) for the first time this year. The warm weather was short lived as it flurried snow on Monday.

I think that brings us up to the interesting part: the last three days.

Tuesday morning I woke up somewhat early and walked downtown to get a much needed haircut. Afterwords I rode the train into Osaka without really having a destination in mind. In Umeda (all train lines lead to Umeda) I switched to the subway and headed south. Staring at the map I decided to ride one stop past where I usually get off, just to see what was there. Coming out of the subway station I immediately came across an apartment rental office. I decided to have lunch before going into the office. After lunch I thought I'd walk around the neighborhood to see what was what. In my wandering I came across a "Mini-mini" real estate office. I'd tried to use the "Mini-mini" website but was beaten back by a ridiculous amount of Kanji. Taking a deep breath I entered the office and was warmly welcomed.

To make a long/boring story short I was shown a few apartments on paper, chose two buildings that looked good, then was taken by car (though both were walking distance) to see said apartments. In the end I put a deposit down on a nice 1K apartment in Nanbanaka, close to the Namba (one of the two hearts of Osaka) and only ten blocks from my company's headquarters. I ended up picking the smaller of the two apartments (even though they were the same cost/month [$100 cheaper than I'm paying now]) because it has location, location, location. I'll be moving between the 24th and 31st of March.

Yesterday I was jostled awake by a 3. something earthquake at 7am. I had been thinking that I might like to get up early so as to take pictures of the Giant Buddha of Hyogo with proper lighting (it faces East so the sun gets in the picture if you go in the afternoon.) So I took this as an opportunity to get some adventuring done. I started my tour in the port/harbor district where the temple with the Buddha is and eventually wandering over near Meriken park and Harborland. Since the weather was nice and I had the time, I took a harbor cruise (something I've been meaning to do since I moved to Kobe.) It was a quick 45 minutes and I took a Lot of pictures (mostly of ships in the harbor, and mostly off-kilter as the boat was rocking.) Here are some of the pictures I took:
The Giant Buddha of Hyogo, bathed in mid-morning light.
The draw-bridge in Harborland (in an unusual "down" state.)
Kobe Port Tower from a slightly different angle (from the deck of the boat.)
Kobe as seen from the harbor.

And that, more or less, brings us up to now. I'm taking today (Thursday) off (using a personal day) to create an artificial "three day weekend" in the middle of the long holiday-less period between winter vacation and the beginning of the new contract year. The Japanese holiday calender really has me spoiled.

Until next time:
Jaa Mata Ne.

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