in kansai

hi all! i safely arrived in osaka 3 days ago! weather here has been very sunny and warm the first 2 days, and a few small showers hit today. but overall it's been pleasant. jetlag has not affected me much either!

the area i'm now in is not exactly osaka. together with kobe, kyoto, and many other cities, they're called the kansai area (関西). but osaka and kobe are both within a 30-minute train ride from where i live, so it is easy access to these 2 cities.

may 3rd to may 6th is a long weekend for the japanese. it's their golden week, which consists of consecutive national holidays. people usually get a full week off (depending if the weekends land in between these holidays) but this year 2 of the holidays are on saturday and sunday, so most people only have 4 days off. the holidays definitely brought the crowd outside!

for 2 days in a row, we were hanging out in kobe. didn't really shop much (yet), but already had a few great meals!

the real sushi "belt" instead of the westernized sushi "boat" :P

whole baby squid - don't worry, they're not alive


strawberries that are hand packed to perfection - each one is the same size, shape, and color


vietnamese pho lunch set, nicely presented

a view of kobe from the restaurant

kobe welcomed its first IKEA store on april 16th. since IKEAs are rare in japan, everyone came to see this "new attraction" during golden week. we were hoping to make it a quick run and just pick up a few items since we're pretty familiar with the self-serve system. however, we got there and was told that the line to enter would be 3 hours!! that's crazier than the longest line at Disneyland! nah, it's not worth waiting that long at IKEA... so we turned back. maybe i'll come back on a day when everyone else is at work. :)

the huge structure, well, just like any other IKEAs

the train station was decorated with the IKEA theme

they also had one of the trains decorated with IKEA sofas and fabrics, but we kept missing that train... since we didn't get to ride it, here's a picture from the promotional material