The primary reason we’re staying in Kobe is an amusement park… that we discovered today is closed for maintenance for about a month. This wasn’t the case when we planned our trip, but it is what it is and we had to change today’s plans accordingly.

Our solution; Harborland, an entertainment/food/shopping complex. It was much bigger than we expected, with multiple several-story shopping centers and scads of restaurants, but our primary goal was the Ferris Wheel Mosaic.

Kristin rode it with me, which is notable since she’s usually a bit scared of these things. As it turned out this was an extremely stable wheel that turned so slowly there was little feeling of movement. The weather was lovely, the views were nice and it was altogether worth the ride.

That’s a photo from the very top. Kobe is a port and there were a lot of cruise ships and ferries docked. Soon we’ll be on one of them…

We did some shopping, ate many things and had a fun day. We’re in that phase of a vacation where you forget what day it is and you don’t set alarms anyway so it doesn’t matter.

Look at that ridiculous naan bread KLS was served with a vegetable curry bought at a random Indian restaurant we found in a basement dining area. Food is inexpensive here usually, but the weak Yen makes it an even better deal. Her meal (naan and curry, salad and iced tea) was only about US$6.

We also opened – a few days too early – a Fukubukuro (lucky bag)! We bought it at Lashingbang for ¥3000 (about $20) and it was said to contain ‘at least’ 50 items.

Here’s what was inside:

Lots of low Kuji prizes, promotional stuff and cards/stickers from wafer candy. A good chunk of this stuff was for series we’d never heard of, and some of it was over a decade old. We’ve been buying Fukubukuro for a few years now so we knew what (not) to expect and had a good chuckle at this pile of mostly garbage.

The above is what we kept, which meant 84% of the items in the lucky bag have now been trashed.

Should I buy another one?