巡礼の一種A Type of Pilgrimage

First up: yeah, I'm about to do National Novel Writing Month, and I still have a lot of stuff from the Tokyo trip that I haven't yet fully translated/played with... so from here until probably December at least, I doubt I'll have the time to translate my blog posts. They'll only be in English for a while.

So I'm back in Kyoto. Tokyo was fun, but I couldn't stay there forever. I'd buy too many things.

Anyway, yesterday I went with a friend to... well, I can't really call it a pilgrimage, but it's kind of similar... maybe. You see, on Google Maps there is a map of locations that look similar to scenes from anime or games. So one of the things I've been doing in Japan is going to some of these places. (For example, Moriguchi City station.)

Yesterday, we headed off to Kobe in search of a number of those different places. We met at Kyoto Station and very rapidly discovered that the JR trains are really expensive. 1050 yen out to Kobe, no thank you. Certainly not when the Hankyu line costs 600 and goes to the exact same place. Even if you have to start from Kyoto Station and pay 210 to go to the Hankyu station at Shijo, it's still cheaper.

On our way to Kobe, though, we stopped at a station called Nishinomiya-kitaguchi (which would translate roughly as Western Shrine, North Entrance), where there were a few Haruhi places. Having not watched Haruhi in a while, I didn't really know what I was looking for, and the map was a little hard to read. We didn't get lost, but we kept having no idea whether we had found a point or not.

This was also when we got lunch. Japan is awesome when it comes to food... where else can you buy an actual decent lunch at a convenience store? (Yay for bento!)

Eventually, we got back on the train and headed for Sannomiya Station. And by that I mean Hankyu Sannomiya Station. There are three of them: JR, Hankyu, and Hanshin. Okay, they're all right next to one another, but still.

The biggest attraction for me here was also the easiest to find: the Kobe Great Bridge. At first it wasn't really recognizable, but once we had crossed it and turned around, it became really obvious. I will get pictures up eventually... I forgot my camera, so I have to wait for my friend to send me the pictures he took.

... I know, I know, I'm a very strange person. Next time I go to Kobe, I'll actually explore the usual tourist places and the like, I swear. Right after I stop in Nishinomiya again... there's still a lot of Haruhi places that I haven't been to yet...