Kobe: That Spaceship Looks Familiar

On my final day in Japan, Stephanie, Hallie, and I headed towards the island to go to the fashion museum. On our train ride to Rokko Island, we passed the longest bridge in the world. As we study our map carefully, we notice a spaceship-like building on the stop all of the Japanese people got off on. We sat there by ourselves, confused and studying the map. As we zoom past the spaceship, Stephanie goes “Wait, that spaceship looks familiar.” Sure enough the spaceship reads ‘Kobe Fashion Museum’. After backtracking our steps we find out that the Kimono exhibit closed the day before. The next exhibit was to open the day after. We went to the only open gallery they had, which was a local Japanese artists collection. Afterwards we went to a dollar store. Excuse me, 100 yuan. 100 yen. Our vocabulary on foreign currency alone is both impressive and confusing. Its an 100 Yen Store. Leave it up to me to find a dollar store in Japan. After shopping extensively, we took the train back to the center of town to go shopping in an urban area. While Stephanie and Hallie got Starbucks, I separated from them to go shopping in the train station. Well, needless to say, I lost myself there. I spent far too much time and money shopping. I headed back to the port and realized the store was closed, where I intended to buy a phone card. So I started knocking on the closed door and thankfully, they were still inside. Flabbergasted, they gave me a phone card only to find there was an endless line at every phone in the port terminal. I decided to pick a station at random in hopes to se their phone. When I got off, I noticed first of all, no one got off. A bad sign. So I look around. I managed to find the only unsafe place in Japan, I swear. It was a series of dark alleyways, one lit building, and, of course, absolutely no pay phones. By now I had an hour before dock time begins. Considering our next port is only a day in Hawaii, 3 hours of dock time (what you would get if you were 1-15 minutes late) would certainly put a damper on the day. So I headed back to the station and decided I would wait in line. I finally got the phone with half an hour to go, only to realize- How the Hell do you work this thing? Once my 25 minutes flew by, I realized I only had five minutes to spare. Of course, this would be the ideal time to lose your ID. I found it and walked on, completely accepting of receiving dock time by this point. I slid my card through with 1 minute to spare.