The Grand Japan Road Trip: Part 2

Well part 1 may have been a bit boring because it wasn't really anything more than a long story about a car journey, but now we have arrived at the point where I can start talking about some actual places, so here we go!

So if you remember I was talking about falling asleep for the evening inside the car, well by the time I had risen from my slumber we had already made it to our first destination, Kobe.

The first thing I saw upon waking up

The weather, pretty much like every other day since I arrived, was super hot.  Despite that walking around the streets was extremely pleasant. 

It's not exactly easy to tell from the pictures of the streets I'm uploading now, but it reminded me of what a small Italian city would look like.  The one thing I will say though, is that Kobe has hills fucking everywhere.  As nice as it is to walk through, on a boiling hot summer day where the weather is like 35+ degrees, the hills really are the worst shit ever. 

For those that can be arsed to traverse the steep hills of the bit of Kobe we were in, you get to see something pretty cool.

The top picture is known as Weathercock House and was home to a German trader.  The bottom picture is Moegi House, the home of an American consul general.  They were both built roughly around 1905 (the exact dates escapes me) and they really stand out from every other building in the area.  For a small fee, you are allowed to walk around each of the houses and look at all the old furniture and stuff like that, as well as a lot of historical information if you are into that kind of thing.  Unfortunately for me, we were on a pretty tight schedule and all the information tablets were in Japanese, so I didn't really have time to sit down and get the full story, but it was still a lot of fun to walk around.  I'll add a gallery for this at the bottom of this post.

Anyway, the other cool thing about this little area of Kobe is that when your done, they have this little thing just outside Weathercock House where one can quench thirst with some delicious natural spring water.

Considering the extreme heat and the lack of vending machines in the area, this thing was a fucking godsend.  I think without this my body would have shriveled up and turned to sand.  Anyway, once we finished gawping at some old houses and made sure we didn't die of dehydration, we returned to the car and made for our next destination....which will come in Part 3

HOLY SHIT IS DAT SOME PHOTOS?!