The weather here has been changing recently - although its still sunny and almost summer-like at times, it is definitely getting chillier and we have been needing long sleeves and duvets! The conbvenience stores are noting the change in seasons as well - they have al recently started to sell oden again. Oden are various foods, boiled in a big vat of fish stock on the shop counter. The vegetable ones are alright, but the processed fish paste ones and the eggs are gross! The drinks choice is also changing - during the summer we had a range of tropical fruit drinks, now it is mostly apple juice and tea in the cold section, but they have brought out the hot coffee heater as well. Here you can buy about a million different varieties of canned hot coffee, tea, hot lemon and my favourite, hot calpis. Nescafe have also brought out some instant coffee-in-a-cups - Vanilla and Maple flavour, and Caramel and Marron flavour!
Last Wednesday, we went to Kobe with some friends and had a fantastis all-you-can-eat lunch at a Brazilian restaurant. They had lots of different meats on big skewers, and it was absolutely delicious - the beef was really good quality and tender - not like some of the meat you get in Japan which is very fatty (presumably that is the way they like it over here). Kobe is a really nice city by comparison with Osaka - the buildings are much newer because of the earthquake, and you get the feeling that it has been planned a little more, rather than being all higgeldy-piggeldy like Osaka. Also, being between the coast and the mountains, it feels a lot cleaner and less hectic than Osaka. Tonight we are going to a Mexican restaurant for friends Martin and Sarah's goodbye party.
Yesterday we went to Akame, where there are 48 waterfalls. It was quite a way to go - an hour by express train, but it was worth it to walk in the forest/mountains and to see some of the scenery on the way. From the train we saw mountains, villages, bamboo forest, and lots of rice fields. Some of the fields were being harvested - in others the rice had already been cut and was hanging in rows to dry out. The waterfalls were lovely - we didn't get round all 48 in the time that we had, but we saw some really nice ones. They were all different sizes, and you got to see them from all different angles as you climbed up the increasingly windy and rickety steps around the sides of the mountain slopes. in the evening I met my friend Hiroe in a restaurant on the 16th floor of a building in Tennoji - the view was amazing - you could see all the lights of the city for miles.
Anyway, better get going as I don't have much time left and want to update my photo page!
Nic.