My Japanese Grannie

A proper speed for a train

Today we were up early as we had to catch the 8.43 Sakura to Kobe.  Not a problem for me, as I am always awake at 5am, and today the others were up early too, so in the end we got to the station a little too early.  As we had so much time on our hands, we decided to have breakfast in a cafe ("Seattle's Best Coffee") rather than a bun from the bakery.  A bit of a mistake, this meant our breakfast cost about 4 times as much, and Matt was disappointed as the egg in his ham and egg muffin was runny, meaning I had to eat that one, and he had mine.  Tom had a cold croissant with no butter / jam etc.  Don't think we will be doing that again - we will stick to a bun from the bakery to take away next time.

Cake time!

We got our train and made ourselves at home.  Tom and I did some scrap-booking whilst Matt did some work.  Tom and I then played countless number of games of Uno (I won) until Daddy gave up his window seat for Tom to stare out of.  The 2.5 hour journey went very fast.  We arrived in Kobe and were greeted by Hiromi at the ticket gate - Tom gave her a huge hug, which of course went down very well.  Hiromi had hired a car for the day, with a booster seat for Tom (how thoughtful), so we got in and she took us to a restaurant for lunch.

She had asked us what we would like to eat, Matt had told her that my appetite and tummy aren't quite normal and that I am always on the look out for healthy stuff, so she took us to a restaurant that specialises in fruit and vegetables.   I had mushrooms and spinach on toast, Matt had toast with kiwi jam and olive oil dip and Hiromi had pitta bread with omelette and avocado, we all had home made minestrone soup.  It was perfect, just what the Dr ordered.  Tom had a bit of everything and, after a false start, ate everything up.

Tom's Japanese fan club

Hiromi then took us to Ashiya to a sugar craft shop she had heard about.  How cool was that?  I was in my element, and spent some time looking at all the cutters which are more funky than any you get in the UK.  I also picked up an angled spatula and some pipettes for adding water to royal icing.  All good stuff.  I did see some colours from the UK in the shop - they were being sold at 4x the price!  They also gave us advice on how to cut cakes so they don't crush.  I'm after a cake cutting knife to take home as every time I cut a cake at home, I seem to ruin it, rather than cut it cleanly.

We then headed back to Rokko and visited Kyoko's cafe / gallery.  It is in an apartment block - you would never know it was there.  She is as brilliant as ever.  I've always liked Kyoko, she has a taste and style all of her own and she carries it really well.  Her cafe / gallery is something that you would only find in Japan - an apartment which has been stripped down.  The front has serving implements mainly from Europe (cheese knives, plates, bowls, glasses and the odd novelty item (corkscrew) etc and food items such as jam, caramelised nuts, cordials etc.  Then there is a big table which acts as a communal table for a cafe.  We got served items from the shop.  I had Chickweed cordial - because I had never heard of it before - strange flavour, a savoury herb type thing, but pleasant enough to drink.  Tom had elderflower cordial and Matt a coffee.  Tom then got served the Japanese version of strawberry shortcake - a sponge cake filled with cream and strawberries, he got dug straight in (mainly for the strawberries I think).

Kawasaki rider

We gave Kyoko and Hiromi hand knitted tea cosies from Cowan Bridge as presents.  They went down extremely well.  One idea for my convalescence, learn to knit again and see if I can knit tea cosies and export them to Japan - if you can knit them quickly enough, you could make a killing -they were absolutely delighted with them.

Once we finished, we said our goodbyes to Kyoko and then headed down to Merikan Park.  We were going to have a walk, but it started to rain, so instead we headed to Kawasaki Good Times World.  We brought Tom here 4 years ago and remembered it as being a good museum.  Tom LOVED it.  Kawasaki make everything from ships, to bikes, to aeroplanes, to boats, to trains, to rockets, to robots etc etc.  This means that there were loads of fab things in the museum for him to play on.  He was a driver in a 0 series shinkansen, a driver of an electric tram, and had a go on a very small motorbike, but most exciting of all there was a model railway in the middle and this took up most of his time.  He was jumping about like a loon watching all the different trains swoosh along.

Bye Bye Hiromi.

In the end we almost had to drag him away.  Hiromi took us back to Shin Kobe, we got ourselves Eki Bento (Station Bento) - Tom got the last special children's bento in the shop - a ceramic 500 series shinkansen full of rice, noodles, karaage and other stuff.  We didn't get to see as he got stuck right in and finished it in record time.  I ate my bento with gusto (was hungry), afterwards the guy I was sat next to started talking to me - turns out he was Japanese by birth but was brought up in Canada.  He was enjoying our conversations about our bentos but a little disappointed that we weren't freaked out by anything!!!!

We got back to Hakata at 8pm, tired but happy, it was a good day.