Giant Robots, Big Smiles.

After the difficulties of the previous day I’d endeavored to make today run as smoothly as possible. A while back my dad had created a song with an oriental theme and had asked me for the name of a park. At the time I’d been looking into a statue of “鉄人二十八号”(Iron man number 28), and had traced it to a place just outside of Kobe called Wakamatsu park, and so the tune was named.

Due to this one of my Dad’s main goals in Japan had been to visit said park and listen to said tune there within. I was more than happy to facilitate this. I’d passed by the statue many times and I’d really wanted to get a closer look for a while, and now I had the perfect excuse.

 

Research done I attempted to phone my parents to confirm our meeting. Of course this is where things started to go wrong. My phone battery died and I’d left my charger in the hotel at Tennoji, fail. I sent a quick message to me Ma and Da through Facebook and set off to Umeda with great haste.

Admittedly on the way I stopped by at a barbers since I needed a trim. They charged 1000yen for 10 minutes and you actually pay at a vending machine, the ticket is then inserted into a slot at the barbers chair and a timer starts, madness. I didn't quite get the cut I’d hoped for, “hanbun gurai zettai ni.” (half off all over), but at least my hair grows quick. Having my head essentially hoovered afterwards was also quite the experience.

So I arrived at Umeda with me mop chopped about fifteen minutes late. I had actually just missed my parents who had headed to J-hoppers to check if I was still there. Mega cock-ups. It basically resulted in us leaving for Kobe 40 minutes late and being in a bit of a mood.

Thankfully the journey to Shin-Negata, station closest to Wakamatsu park, was uneventful. Upon arrival there were signs everywhere pointing to Tetsujin so we had no trouble finding him. The park itself was a bit anti-climatic. It was essentially a small dirt plot with a few trees and a few kid things, climbing frame slide and so on.

Still the main event was the statue and wow it at least was very impressive. Standing at just shy of 60ft this thing is rather gargantuan. It was actually constructed to bring renewed prosperity to one of the worst hit areas of Kobe during the great Hanshin earthquake. It was possibly the happiest I’d seen my dad the whole holiday as he plugged his headphones in and listened to his tune underneath Tetsujin.

The rest of the area was pretty rubbish really. Nearby the statue was a small shopping precinct that in some ways resembled St Johns shopping precinct back home. We wandered a short while before heading back into Kobe proper.

I had decided to take my parents to Mosaic for some Dinner. Unfortunately due to a still being a bit knackered from yesterday and my head being a bit fuzzy from the heat I got disorientated again. The large buildings really don’t help. I managed to find my way to the main shopping mall and we happily relished the break from the intense heat.

Mosaic, a kind of entertainment district, wasn’t far from there. We looked around a few restaurants serving the world famous beef and happily passed it over as some dishes were costing over 100 pound. I found a place that was serving a Zaru soba (cold buckwheat noodles) at a reasonable seeming price. It was pretty good though the raw egg you dip the noodles into was a little much for my mum.

Stuffed (the set was actually bigger than I’d thought) we took a look around Harborland. It was actually pretty naff, it looks like something straight out of a seaside fair from 1970’s Britain, with rickety Ferris wheel and merry-go-round in place.

By the time we got back to Sannomiya, the centre of Kobe, it was already nearing 4 o’clock. After a bit of messing around we found the tourist information office and stopped for a coffee. Once again we’d lost a lot of time just wandering. Fine for me as I’m young and can just bomb from place to place, but for my parents it was no good. We settled on a plan to walk down to the Kobe city hall to get a good overall look of the City and then head back.

I’d been up to the top before but the views were still impressive. Whilst I do like Kobe I guess I don’t actually know it that well. To be honest I don’t really know anywhere that well it’s all still a bit alien to me. I felt I’d let my parents down abit, I know I hadn’t but it seemed that way at the time. Either way we resolved to have a better plan laid out for Hiroshima tomorrow as it would involve a lot more travelling.

After leaving Umeda we went our separate ways for the night. Yesterday had been extremely tiring and we were now feeling the effects. I realized how acclimatized I must be to the weather, it was damned hot but I wasn’t feeling the effects too badly. It seemed to be really sapping Mum and Dad and as something I need to account for better if anyone visits me in summer again.

I got hold of plenty of information about Hiroshima at the hostel and got some useful pointers from the staff. Feeling a lot more confident about tomorrow I turned in for an early night. Tomorrow was going to be long, although I didn’t realize at the time just how long.

Mata ne 

(Once again most of the credit for photographs goes to my Dad, I hardly took any).