On August 19th we took the train from Hiroshima to Kobe in 6 hours, and went directly to our hostel: The Kobe Deer Backpackers House. The hostel was so small, it only contained 4 rooms!! And there were only 9 guests in total (including the 4 of us). So we spent the rest of the evening hanging out with them and watching the Olympics.
We made a friend at the hostel, named Romain, from Switzerland, who I strongly feel must somehow be related to me because of all our similarities. I shall list them off:
- We both have the Cannon Powershot SD800IS 7.1 mega pixels camera.
- We both have almost identical DSLR Cameras. He has the Nikon D80 and I have the D70.
- He is in electrical engineering.
- His father is Hungarian.
Since he was pretty cool we decided to invite him to tour with us the following day.
Midnight was fast approaching, meaning my time as a 21 year old was quickly running out. At exactly midnight, Steph, Ken and Fieke turned off all the lights in the hostel and brought out ice cream topped with an ice cream waffle, chocolates and candles and they sung me happy birthday. We all shared my birthday treat and went off to bed.
On the morning of my birthday we took the train to Himeji (with our new friend Romain) to visit the Himeji Castle, World Cultural Heritage site. The Himeji Castle is a magnificent castle dating back to the early 1600s. We were able to explore the castle grounds as well as the inside of the castle. To enter the castle, everyone must remove their shoes and carry them in a plastic bag while exploring the castle barefoot.
As we were leaving the Castle, and trying to find an entrance to the train station, we took a wrong turn and ended up in an underground bicycle parking lot!! Bicycle parking lots are very popular in Japan, as bicycles are a very popular form of transportation!! It’s pretty interesting to look at because very very few of the bikes are locked!! People will leave their bikes unlocked for days in these parking lots, or even on the street, because no one steals in Japan!
We said goodbye to our new friend and got on a train for Osaka.
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