We moved house again today from Nagoya to Kobe. We had a plan last night to take our bags to Nagoya Station in the morning and leave them in a locker, spend some time doing things in the day and then head to Kobe around 4:30pm.

We slept in a bit again this morning because we have both been sleeping fairly restlessly at this hostel in part due to uncomfortable beds as well as noisy fellow patrons. Anyway we packed up our things and left the hostel around 9:30am.

We made the fairly long trek up to the station and had to check around in three different locker sections before we found a spare one. Everyone seemed to be a bit out of Japanese sorts today with unruly crowds and people jumping queues and just general unpleasantness with one old man even growling at me when I was in his way. So that combined with trying to find a locker put a dampener on our spirits.

After we had our bags stowed we had breakfast at a French bakery where I had a black coloured focaccia! We felt a bit better after that and headed out on the subway for our first planned stop.

The subway was quite crowded but we made it to Osu Kannon Temple in the end. It wasn't a very exciting temple and I think most people actually go there for the nearby shopping lane. We hung about for a bit but there wasn't a great deal to look at.

We were planning on going to the zoo but it was 12pm by then and we didn't think we'd have enough time to see it all. So we bought ourselves a bento box lunch from a food market at the bottom of a shopping centre and took an earlier train to Kobe.

After 2 hours on two trains we were in Kobe. We immediately both liked it better than Nagoya. The area seems nicer and less crowded and people were just generally politer. It was a straightforward stroll to our hotel. Yes, that's right, hotel. We have a bit of a luxury stay in Kobe and so far it seems pretty great. We have a huge room with private bathroom and we even did some laundry.

We hung out in the room for the afternoon resting and waiting for our laundry to wash and dry and then at 6pm headed to Kobe Luminaire, a yearly Christmas light show they have in the streets. It just so happened to be the last day of the show today which was quite the coincidence.

Kobe Luminaire was located just a few streets away from our hotel and once we got there we trekked around to the start and walked with the rest of the crowd to view the lights. It was a good display with a long arch like tunnel leading up the street and then the climax being a castle type structure at the end. It was very festive. I was hopeful to have a hot toddy from the food market stalls gathered at the end but no such luck. We had some ordinary street food (yakisoba, takoyaki, taiyaki and some other weird crepe thing) before heading to the main shopping street.

The shopping street is a wide undercover mall which reminds us of Osaka but heaps less crowded. There was also some narrower alley malls that had some cool hipster looking shops. On our walk we found a Pablo cake shop which was perfect because I've been wanting to buy one ever since we walked past a stall in a Tokyo underground station and smelt them cooking and saw the massive line up of people. I bought us a cake, which is actually a cheese tart, for us to enjoy for dessert. It was a bit cute because when I ordered one the lady serving me repeated my order back and then the other ladies called back "yes, Pablo!"

After we had the cake we started to walk back home and stopped at a gaming arcade for a few games.

When we got back to the hotel we did some planning of what to do tomorrow and have some cool ideas including the ropeway and harbour land. With a potential day trip to an onsen village the day after!