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| Meriken Park, Maritime Museum and The Port Tower |
Today was the last day of our rail pass (boo!). We didn't have anything planned, thinking we would wait to see what Tom wanted to do and see how the weather was. It dawned grey, but hot and no rain. We asked Tom what he wanted to do: answer was drive the blue train and play football.
We formulated a plan, go to Kobe, play football in Meriken Park, visit Kawasaki World (Asami told us about Kawasaki World when we met up with her) and then hop to Shin Osaka for an early evening curry and come home on the blue train. Another full day for us all then.
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| Nice old bus |
We got our regular east bound Shinkansen (9.51) to Shin Kobe, then got a very nice old green bus called the City Loop to Meriken Park, had look at the Earthquake Memorial which showed pictures of the damage: expressways collapsed, parts of bridges missing etc and then focused on the port area - this was badly hit during the earthquake, in fact walking around it today, Matt hardly recognised any of it. Then on to a green area to play football (Tom's football really has come on during this holiday, with some good confident kicking, although he hasn't really had much chance to do anything else this holiday).
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| Takoyaki Burger |
We then had a quick lunch at a cafe: a Takoyaki burger, some chicken Karaage and a couple of hash browns - cheap and cheerful. We then went to the museum. Matt had been there previously and remembered it being OK but no more than OK. However, when he last went it was just a Maritime museum, this time it was a Maritime museum with Kawasaki Good Times World attached to it. Kawasaki have a huge plant in Kobe Port where they make ships and trains and another plant in Akashi (just down the road where they make motorcycles - including my old one). I guess in the UK they are known for motorcycles - but they make pretty much everything: shinkansen, huge cargo boats of all kinds, aeroplanes, helicopters, big digger machines, huge drills (the kind that make road and train tunnels), rockets, robots - you name it, they make it.
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| Speaking to Mae whilst driving the Shinkansen! |
It was a fantastic museum, a couple of cinema experiences (Tom was scared at first but got more settled the more he saw them), and explanation of the history of the company (didn't get to read much of that) then a load of machines to marvel at: plenty of bikes, a zero series bullet train, a new battery operated tram, a robot solving Rubik's cubes, a model railway (of course), plenty of games to play on and buttons to press. In short, it excited all three of us, especially as it was the kind of museum that allowed you to clamber all over the machines - you could sit on a few of the bikes (including Matt's old ZRX1200), a jet ski and, best of all, sit in the driver's cab of the bullet train and the electric tram (which had a James Bond style driving cab - you felt as if you needed a white cat to stroke in the chair whilst driving).
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| Futuristic electric tram cab |
We were all having a fab time, and then Tom announced that he had pooed in his pants!! Talk about destroying a day, especially as, for the first time in Tom's life, I had forgotten baby wipes. Matt came into the lady's disabled toilet with me to help clear up the mess and then Tom got a very stern talking too and was told he would not now be able to drive the blue train home - that set off the tears and howling even more, but we had to show him just how naughty pooing in his pants is. We know he knows how to poo in the toilet, so we have to instil in him now just how bad it is by withdrawing treats - we just don't know what else to do.
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| Me in a bubble |
It took a while for all of us to calm down to carry on enjoying the museum. There were two really good films on how to build a ship and how to build a train - more interesting for Matt and I, but Tom was contrite and sat reasonably still during them.
We went for a wander upstairs, which had more displays about the port and the earthquake before having one last play on the trains. We then went to the Port Tower and rode the lift to the top (included with the museum ticket). We looked at the view (quite good even though it was a hazy day) and shunned the selection of terrible souvenir shops (if you don't like red bean paste cookies or cutesy plastic junk then there is very little to interest you in souvenir shops in Japan)
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| He looks a natural don't you think? |
We decided to head to Osaka via Kobe station and went via the Ha-Re shopping mall. I noticed a shop with the sign "Baby Plaza", so we decided to go inside - we found a selection of very Japanese t-shirts (full of kanji and Japanese style art) in Tom's size at a reasonable price - yahoo, we bought two - still no Shinkansens though. We then noticed a Uniqlo was in the building, so we went to look and bingo we found a selection of Shinkansen t-Shirts. We bought one of each in various sizes. The ironic thing is that we were in the same store 2 days into our holiday but didn't see them - I guess we weren't looking hard enough, were jet-lagged or something. Anyway the quest is now over, we have what we were looking for. Tom hit a brick wall in Uniqlo - it was obvious he needed a sleep. We remembered from our visit 2 years ago that there was a vending area with seats upstairs (Tom fell asleep there in his baby rucksack last time), so we went looking for it. It was still there with some comfy sofas as well, so Tom and I snuggled down and in a couple of minutes he was fast asleep.
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| Blue Train - a Kawasaki |
He was in a very deep sleep, after 45 mins we couldn't wake him, so I carried him to Kobe train station - he woke up just as we arrived and sat very still on the train to Osaka. He perked up when he saw curry was coming our way. Our waitress got our order wrong though, so we got two types of pork Katsu and no ebi fry (poo) I was really looking forward to the ebi fries as well. Anyhow, the curries were demolished and then we got the blue train home (we didn't sit in the coach with the children's play area though)
Then home, yoghurt, bath and bed for Tom. We put our stinky sandals in the washing machine to see if we could get rid of their hideous odour. It worked, they smelt OK - it's only taken the whole holiday for us to work that out!
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