My 3rd Japanese teacher hailed from Kobe, and when I told him that I would be in Osaka for a month, he suggested that I could drop by if I was free to take a look around his hometown.
The train to and from Himeji passed through Kobe, and it ran between a narrow strip of ground, sandwiched between the sea and houses, or mountains. It felt and looked precariously dangerous at first, then it started to felt pretty amazing. My sensei was always telling me that there wasn’t enough land in Japan, so they have to make the most out of whatever they have.
From Sannomiya, I changed and took a train to Nanking machi to look for lunch in the China Town. There was a lion dance going on and the streets were crowded with people.
Stopped to buy a bun from a Chinese seller, and turned out he was of Hokkien descent. I’m half-Hokkien myself, so he found it pretty amusing to have finally met someone who could converse in the dialect. So we chatted away in the language unknown to most of the people around us, as he ranted on about how bad business was lately due to a minor slump in the economy and so on.
Had noodles at another shop, and despite it being labeled as ‘spicy’, it was mostly due to the pepper. Finishing it up, I headed back to Sannomiya to buy some souvenirs as the place was getting too crowded for my liking.
While waiting for the train back to Osaka, overheard another group of people chattering away in a different dialect of Hokkien. Out of curiousity, I asked them where they were from, and the tour leader told me they are all from Taiwan. The leader himself was staying in Nara for a couple of years now, and he does these little small tours to earn some side income. Upon learning where I hailed from, he advised me that I could also do the same thing if I was interested in staying on in Japan but I laughed it off.
Headed to Umeda to collect my bus tickets I reserved earlier in the day. With this, my trip to Nagano is all set!
この長い旅で 