Kobe, Day 3

Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Kobe, Kinki, Japan
Today we decided to get food for breakfast from a nearby convenience store. As most things in Japan, the convenience store food was of great quality and everything looked so delicious! So, after some struggle and deliberation, we picked some food and ate it at the hostel. This option is cheap, fast and tasty, so it's definitely something to consider in the future :)
This time at the conference there was the poster session, where I was presenting . But before that there was a "one minute madness" session, where each poster and demo presenter did a 1-minute teaser speech to attract visitors to their poster or demo. Thanks to the advice from my co-supervisor, Mark Hancock, I created a funny videos featuring hovering cats (watch it here) :) The video was a hit and I got a number of comments during the poster session!
After the conference we planned to go to Arima, a nearby onsen (hot spring) town. But the next half an hour turned out to be the most frustrating experience in Japan so far! We walked to the bus station, but there was no ticket counters or a map of all routes. So, after some running around the bus station, we asked a nearby travel agency for directions. They pointed us to the correct bus stop. However, it turned out that no buses run to Arima in the evenings. We asked a taxi driver for the price of getting to Arima with a taxi, but it was ridiculously expensive. Fortunately, earlier that evening a hostess at our hostel mentioned a local bath house, located within a 7-minute walk. So, we made our way back to the hostel and got the directions to that place. It is called Ninomiya Onsen and it is technically a sentō (communal bath house), but it does have a hot spring, so it can be called an onsen as well! The experience was amazingly relaxing! The bath has separate parts for men and women and no bathing suits are allowed inside. Apart for a pool with hot water and a small outdoor hot spring bath (carbonated sodium chloride spring with iron), the onsen featured personal bubble baths with jets blowing water from different directions. After soaking in hot water for half an hour, we cooled down with some lemonade from a handy vending machine and relaxed in massage chairs (a very helpful Japanese man helped us figure out the buttons on the chairs!).
After the bath, we wondered around the train station area, checking out restaurants and arcade machine parlours :)

Comments

Elena
2011-11-21

A dal'she????????????

2025-02-12

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