Akazaka & Kobe


Sunday the 24th of September saw the Young Mr. Evans [hereafter referred to as YME] climbing a Red Slope in Shiga Prefecture cleverly named Akazaka (red slope in Japanese). The "red" slope was very green and beautiful. It was climbed with a group of Japanese people that YME didn't know, but that were kind enough to provide fresh fruit throughout the 3 hour hike.

YME didn't take a whole lot of photos on the mountain, but if you're interested in looking at more pictures of the hike, CLICK HERE for somebody else's page about their hike. Hope you've been brushing up on your Japanese if you plan on reading it though.

After fresh fruit, hiking, and view taking in, all that's really left for a man to do is go soak in a hot spring. YME not being one to nock the needs of his body did that very thing, then sat in front of a TV watching sumo and drinking coffee flavored milk until it was time to head home.

Not really related to anything, but just something that amused the YME is this guy (left) that brought a portable stove to eat noodles on top of the mountain that took him all of an hour and a half to climb.

In order to prepare for the hike YME decided to walk around Kobe the day before and see some sights like this here mosque (right).


tower That wasn't very exciting, and neither was the ugly Kobe tower, but eating at this famous Butaman (pork dumplings) shop in Kobe's China Town was pretty cool.
buta

Of course ugly towers, happened upon mosques, and pork wrapped it dough aren't really enough to sear a day into one's memory. But no searing is needed when you've got the use of a photo booth on hand.

For anyone not familiar with Print Club let me run it down real quick. It's a booth (there's usually a dozen or so of these machines in any arcade) that takes a half dozen or so pictures of you and your friends then lets you draw crap on them before printing them out into tiny pictures that you can cut apart and divvy up amongst yourselves. All for about $4 US. But just take a picture of you and your loved ones isn't enough. Sometimes you want to dress up to mark the occasion. Rent a kimono to wear? A Cheerleading outfit? Oh, how about a member of the Nazi regime (no shit, check out the picture on the left)? Now that's a picture that will help your trip to Kobe stick out [unless of course you dressed like a member of the SS when you visited Tokyo too. Then it could get confusing]. I wonder why these things haven't caught on in the states yet....


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