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“The Alien Trip vol.01” Official DIGGERs Kana Yukawa and Jina from Egypt go to Arima Hot Springs in Kita ward!

DIG翻訳部

有馬温泉

Your navigator for this alien trip is the official DIGGER Kana Yukawa who just returned from Spain. I hope you enjoy reading about my incident-filled adventure with an alien who sends reports to her home country about the trip full of misunderstandings and overlooked things due to the Latino mode I was in.


Hola!
This is Kana for Alien Trip reporting from Arima Hot Springs in Kita ward.
Wait… Kita ward?

Arima Hot Springs.
It’s just as famous as Kusatsu and Gero.
It’s just as old as Dougo and Shirahama.
Here case with other hot spring resorts.
You drive on the highway for around 2 hours, go down to the open road, stop by at a roadside station and after around 40 minutes when different sentiments while travelling reaches the peak, you eventually arrive at the village where hot spring steam is rising from everywhere.

At 9 am~5 pm on a weekday, I have a day trip mission to a destination with the address Kita ward, Kobe city!
I never dreamed that such place was included in the area for investigation of Kobe city.
What on earth is Kobe up to?
Oops, it’s my job to investigate.
Well, here I go.

I left the house at 9 in the morning, heading for Paiyama (pie mountain) in the plaza at Sannomiya station. (a popular meeting place in Sannomiya)
To be honest, it was the hardest part for me to get on the elevator of my apartment building revealing my blond hair since I normally wear a black wig to blend into my surrounding.
“Hi, X’s mom, so today, you are …?”
Just picture a packed elevator at 8:15 in the morning, someone staring at you with the air of wanting to ask further but can’t.
But after that, as I pushed my way through the businessmen going to Kobe Steel up the hill towards the station, I took back my pride as a Fukabori navigator and held my head high looking determined.
If I stare first, the other person will look away.
I took this from a teaching by a teacher in Shimanto River who goes number 2 outside. He said, “When going to the bathroom outside, face the direction where there are many people.”
This is worth remembering.

At 9 am, I met up with Jina, my companion for this investigation, at Paiyama.
“She has the beauty comparable to Cleopatra.” was the only vague information given to me, but I had no trouble spotting this beautiful woman.
Her father is a Naples-born Italian and her mother an Alexandria-born Egyptian.
Jina is a cooking expert and owns an Egyptian restaurant and a wine bar in Sannomiya.
She is a woman with an undaunted attitude who, shortly after coming to Japan, smashed and broke her finger in the automatic door of a taxi but walked away with a smile on her face.
Taxi drivers in Japan, please pay special attention to foreigners taking a taxi!

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We hopped on the 9:20 Kobe Municipal Subway departing from Sannomiya and transferred to the Shintetsu at Tanigami station. After around 10 minutes from Sannomiya, I already got this “Wow, it’s so green. The air is clean.” feeling.
We made one more transfer at Arimaguchi and arrived at Arima Hot Springs before 10:00. At the tourist bureau, we got some information on popular sightseeing spots.

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We received a strange map on which the south is put on the top (apparently this is because to people in Arima, south is where the mountains are). Now, off we go!
 
【Sake Ichiba at Taikou Dori】

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One minute after arrival …Let’s start with a glass of drink.
This is Sake Ichiba at Taikou Dori, just opposite the tourist bureau.

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It’s a liquor store that sells all sorts of alcoholic beverages from factory-fresh barreled draft beer to Kobe wheat beer.
Tourists and hikers start their day here boozing.

At Arima Hot Springs, there are other bars here and there that are open in the morning.
I’ve heard people say, “The Japanese are serious people so they don’t drink while the sun is out.”, but I guess Arima Hot Springs is a place where people do drink in the morning.
Not bad at all!

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We had a drink and stewed soybean with Japanese pepper as tidbits.
Jina the cooking expert waxed lyrical over the story of smelly raccoon meat she had in nearby Sanda.(unsurprisingly, her smartphone was all in Arabic!)

【Takenaka Meat Shop】

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After a glass of drink, we got hungry.
So we strolled along the main street, sampling Japanese pepper and kelp and sensed an air of “Don’t you just walk pass our place” coming from the meat shop.
In the corner, there was a small window for take-out orders just like one we used to see in old days where an old woman sold cigarettes.
Somehow there seems to be a rule in Kobe-“Popular meat shops cook croquettes and ground beef cutlets and sell them in a corner of their shop.”
In other words, it’s correct to make the following judgment-“They cook croquettes and ground meat cutlets and sell them in a corner of their shop, so it is a popular meat shop in Kobe.”
130 yen a croquette, 250 yen a ground beef cutlet.
While we were trying to decide which one to get, two women quickly came from behind and ordered 10 croquettes as if they frequent the shop.

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I asked, “Are you from around here?”
I immediately started my investigation. “We’re from Shiga,” they laughed.
When they come to Arima, they always drop by to get the croquettes to serve for dinner. (What a splendid idea to get dinner on the way home to avoid the tedious chore of cooking after a trip to a hot spring!)
Besides the family loves them!
It won’t be an investigation if we don’t eat, will it?
So Jina and I bought one croquette and one ground meat cutlet and shared them.
OMG! They’re so good!
My image of ground meat cutlets was “deep fried cardboard” and they were unappealing to me, but this simple ground meat was very meaty that you could almost hear the cook confidently saying “There’s nothing to it. It’s just meat seasoned with salt and pepper and deep fried.” Simply amazing.

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Similarly the croquette was simple and delicious you could almost hear the cook say, “I just deep fried good quality meat with boiled potatoes.”
They were so good that the cooking expert Jina and I couldn’t help talking about how good food makes us feel so happy.
By the way, Jina and I dropped by for a ground meat cutlet each and bought some croquettes to take home.

【Coffee Shop Doukatei】

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Oh señor! I sense a Latin taste!

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I opened the modern and chic entrance door and entered the spacious relaxed café.

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It was a rare Portuguese restaurant. There were only 3 stores in the Kansai area.

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Portugal.
Yes, the country that brought tobacco, colorful sugar candy, sponge cake, and the matchlock gun to Japan.
The country that shares the same peninsula with Spain, where I lived for 10 years, and the country that I frequently visited almost every month where kind people live.

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The shop owner Mr.Yasujiro Toyoda is a glass artist who studied in Lisbon, the capital of Portugal. The plates, lights and all other glassware are all his works.
Even the toilet has an artistic touch. Very relaxing.

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We treated ourselves to the traditional Portuguese dessert cericaia that sort tastes like baked pudding and chiffon cake, in the shop with the open big window facing the back yard. Jina reacted to the taste.
“This fruit is stewed with cloves, isn’t it? It’s a familiar taste. We use a lot of cloves, too, in Egypt.”
It’s Jina’s dream to let more people in Japan know about Egyptian sweets.

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Most traditional Mediterranean sweets are preserved foods with a long shelf life and use a lot of sugar and spices and are stewed and baked.
Jina guesses that because it is an area with constant conflicts, the sweets developed into portable emergency food to carry around during war.
Mr. Toyoda and Jina had their sweets chat.

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Jina complained that it’s hard to get good fresh plum in Japan, so Mr. Toyoda told her about his supplier where she can get some. Obrigado, amigo! (Thank you, friend!)
I shared my story about Finisterra, the westernmost point of the Eurasian Continent.
Señor Toyoda wants more Japanese people to become familiar with cericaia, a modern-type castella cake. It would be worth stopping by to hear stories from him about Portugal, a place we don’t often travel to.
Oh, anyone would think this woman in the picture is his wife, but apparently she isn’t.

【Muragen】

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Couldn’t be luckier! At lunchtime, we happened to come across a tempting Soba restaurant.
But when we took a peek, there were people in line.
Just when we were about to leave the place, a group of 4 middle-aged women asked us to take their picture.
I haven’t held a digital camera in a long time. “Ok, say cheese!”
We turned around to leave but were stopped with a “Do you want me to take yours?”
Puzzled, I said to myself, “Why not…”
Jina and I, both puzzled, looked tense in our expressions and the way we posed.
The women secretly told us,
“This place is owned by Hiroko Koshino’s husband. There’s always a long line.
The main store is in Ashiya (equivalent of Beverly Hills in the US) It’s a one-Michelin-starred restaurant…
Oh, is that so? In that case, shall we? Since we’re here♪
We’re in the middle-aged-women mode. We got in line and went in.

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Jina ordered warm fresh yuba (dried bean curd) soba.

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I ordered cold grated yam soba.

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How delicious!
“It took me a while since I came to Japan, but now I can slurp food,” Jina said. And she slurped the soba noisily.
As for me, who lived in Spain for 10 years, I can’t seem to re-accustom myself to the culture of “slurping food” so I quietly chewed the soba.
A short tempered Tokyoite might have yelled at me and said, ”Stop eating your soba like that!” but it still was delicious.
Really delicious.
Even the laver (dried sea weed) and sesame topped on the grated yam were so moan-inducing.
Jina gave me some of her yuba. Yum.
I was just about to give her some of my grated yam when she stopped me and said, “No thank you! I don’t want any!”
Jina can’t stand slimy food and even hates mulukhiya, an Egyptian slimy plant used in Egyptian cooking.
Anyway, we didn’t know which was Koshino Hiroko’s husband (we don’t even know if he was actually there), but Muragen was wonderful.
The tea was great. And so was the soba yu(water left after boiling soba).
I only slurped the soba, but it was very delicious.
Yuba soba in the menu is easily misread as yuzu soba, but since the minced yuzu (citron) skin is in yuba soba for garnishes, it’s all right even if you order by mistake.

【Nenbutsu Temple】

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Sal flowers had just begun to bloom.
We were told this by the tourist bureau.
Even with a map it wasn’t an easy search. We walked along a path that was so narrow anyone would doubt it’s the right way, and we arrived at Nenbutsu Temple where they have a sal garden.

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▽Buddha at Nenbutsu Temple

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This was originally the second home of Nene, Hideyoshi Toyotomi’s official wife.
Nene in Spanish means baby, but this Nene didn’t have any baby. How ironic.
The story behind this temple is that this second house of Nene, who was idolized by many people, was torn down by Tokugawa during some battle in Osaka. Using his power as the new leader, he reconstructed the house as the temple of the Jodo sect, the religion he believed in.

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Flowers of the sal tree bloom in the morning and by evening fall to the ground.

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・It is the truth that all glories must fade.
・The echoes of the impermanence of things.
・Oh, how heartless sings Ann Luis.(?)
They are all lines taken from the Heike Tales!

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At the reception, you can pick up a mini brochure and read the words of the chief priest.
“Humans are vulnerable so don’t keep pain to yourselves. Hand it over to Buddha.”

If you can, look as if you were born 500 million years ago and talk to the head monk.”
500 million years ago…that was the time of the Cambrian explosion! Way before the year of Buddha!
What an unbelievable place, Nenbutsu Temple.
Feeling like a new-born trilobite, I sat on a Japanese room facing the sal tree. (The legless chair was prepared for foreign tourists.)

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I just love their garden.
As I was being absorbed in the beauty of the garden, a former head monk came by.
The old man started talking to us.

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Positioned on both sides of the 300 year old sal tree which produces white summer camellia flowers are two natural stones.
The one of the left symbolizes a sparrow, the one on the right a clam.
They say that one day a sparrow dove into the ocean and turned itself into a clam. Don’t you think they have the same colors?
Such simplified versions of legends exist in China.
Apparently it means, “Every thing goes around more dynamically than you think.”

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Jina and I spent a long quiet time talking about our constantly changing lives. We have experienced leaving our home country, parting with our family, and working at various places.
This is a magical place that induces the feeling to talk about such things.
The Italian-born Egyptian-raised Jina said, “It feels like I‘ve been here before.”
It’s amazing how we are sitting together side by side at this place on the planet.
On our way out, we said to the old man “We felt very relaxed.” and thanked him. Then he put his hands together and said, “Those are the most pleasing words. This is all fate.” and said good bye.
Heart-warmed, we left the temple and heard chatting voices coming from nearby.
It was the women who we took each other’s pictures of at Muragen soba shop.
This time Jina strongly recommended visiting the temple.
This is also fate.
 

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By the way, the weeping cherry trees are also spectacular here and is a perfect place for flower viewing but not known to many people.
You will see why. There are benches right below the cherry blossoms.
Under the cherry blossoms in full bloom, why not talk of love that you encountered at this place out of all the places in the world?
And look as if you were born 500 million years ago.

【Kawakami Shouten】

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As we were munching and walking around, we found a shop where we can sample everything sold there including soup stock.

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When she started her culinary studies, Jina began with Japanese food.
To her, freshly cooked rice and pickles is a blissful meal.
She bought some soup stock and matsutake konbu (kelp mixed with matsutake mushroom)
As for myself, I got some soup stock and salt seasoned with Japanese pepper.
We both got konbu(kelp) soy sauce samples.

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This very moment as I write this report, I just realized that there was one thing I forgot to buy at Kawakami Shouten.
I forgot the karaka.
It’s preserved bark of the prickly ash tree. How forgetful of me after it was recommended by the tourist bureau!
People from Kyushu ate this and said in their dialect, “Wow! Gabai, karakabai!” (This is super hot!) and this is the origin of the food’s name…Sorry, I made this up, but people say that it is very spicy but good.
Oh, well, they say that whatever you forget to do while travelling gives you a reason to go back.
There will be a next time.


I noticed that the items sold at souvenir shops in Arima Hot Springs are all sophisticatedly packaged.
The Japanese pepper, pickles, bamboo crafts, everything.
They are all traditional items but are properly packaged.
This is probably one of the reasons that tourists become attracted to Arima Hot Springs and travel a long distance to come here.

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And it was already time to leave Arima Hot Springs.
We unfortunately couldn’t get in the hot spring bath, but that will be done in our next visit.
But even if you can’t dunk into a hot bath, you can still enjoy the hot springs at foot baths.
Besides, it takes only 30 minutes from Sannomiya.
Look, here’s our train!
…It was a big mistake to hop on the train.
But didn’t realize this until 40 minutes later…

It was chatting time on the train for Jina and me.
“I was born as a human, so I have the right to choose which country to live in and which country to die in. I chose Japan.”
These were Jina’s words.
“There were some hard times, but no matter how difficult, humans have the power to overcome difficulties. Life is not full of negative things. There are surely good things too.”
Yes, I agree.
Jina, so is today one of the “good things”?
“Yes. I’m really glad I came today. Arima is awesome. To be honest, I didn’t expect so much. I thought it would be very touristic. But I realized there was more to it. I was overwhelmed. I want every Japanese to know about this place because you can directly experience the wonderful things about the place.”

This was supposed to be the climax of our chat, but I realized it was taking a long to arrive at Sannomiya.
It was a bit after 5 o’clock and we were at Shinkaichi terminal.
Wait a minute.
Oh, no! We took the wrong route!
This was not the Kobe Municipal Subway that we took when we came, but it looks like we hopped on the Shintetstu Arima Line that goes directly to Shinkaichi (Shinkaichi being the last stop).

With that incident, we finally arrived at our goal point Paiyama at 5:20.
Jina opens her restaurant at Kitanosaka at 6:00, and she has no helpers.
I felt so bad…
“Don’t worry! It’ll be okay. We need to smile at times like this!”
Jina left with a big smile on her face. What a wonderful woman.
As for me, here’s my “mission completed” pose.

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Arima Hot Springs in Kita Ward.
It is a place that makes you have different sentiments, a place with a history, a place with delicious food, and a place with hot springs.
It is a place with once-in-a-lifetime encounters with travelers.
It felt like a one night trip.
I can’t believe this is within Kobe city, and only 30 minutes from Sannomiya!
Kobe is unbelievable!

These two women were the Alien Trip travelers.
・Kana Yukawa
Born in Nagasaki. While studying law at Waseda University, gets involved in starting business at Yahoo JAPAN. In 1999, moves to Spain. While in Spain, writes an article regularly for “Hobo Nikkan Itoi Shinbun” and starts writing professionally then on. In 2009 returns to Japan. Starts up and currently works for Liberta Gakusha, a project which helps improve skills to live in Kobe.

・Egyptian chef Jina Fujiwara. (Alexandria-born Egyptian mother and Naples-born Italian father)
Has a shop in Zo Building.
Dining Bar Jina
http://jinabar.seesaa.net/article/206514336.html

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This is a translation of the letter written by Jina in Arabic.

Kobe is a city that I am very familiar with.
I had thought Arima Hot Springs in Kobe was one of those common touristic attractions in Japan. I was wrong. I thoroughly walked around Arima Hot Springs and my thoughts were changed.
Japanese hot springs are famous worldwide.
Among them is Arima Hot Springs, the oldest in Japan with an old history and loved by many people now and in the past, where the imperial family, aristocrats, and cultural figures have been visiting since 1600.
By visiting Arima Hot Springs, I was able to discover many wonderful things about Japan.
I strongly recommend this place to people who want to have a deep understanding of Japan and the spirit of the Japanese people.


WRITTEN ON 2015-07-27
Kana Yukawa
While studying at Waseda University, gets involved in the starting up of Yahoo JAPAN but waives the right to the stock options worth several hundreds of millions of yen. Suddenly she and her soul flee to Spain, where she could not speak a word of Spanish. Here, she is discovered by Mr. Shigesato Itoi and starts writing regularly for Hobo Nichi. Ten years later, she moves to Kobe and starts up a project called “Ikiru Chie to Chikara wo Takameru Liberta Gakusha” (Improve Wisdom of Life and Will to Live at Liberal Gakusha) . “Let’s make a society where people are accepted as they are!” She exchanges revolutionary ideas with her amigos. Her recent publication is Taryoku Shihon Shugi Sengen-Datsu JikoSekinin to Renkei de Korekarawo Ikiru (Declaration of Reliance on others and Capitalism – Live Today by Escaping from Self-Responsibility and by Collaboration) (Tokuma Shoten Publishing)
http://www.kanasol.jp/

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神戸市北部にある温泉街。日本三古湯のひとつ。豊臣秀吉が度々訪れていたことでも知られており、「金泉」「銀泉」等がある。舒明天皇(593〜641年)、孝徳天皇(596〜654年)の頃から世間に名を知られるようになった。【アクセス】■電車神戸市営地下鉄山手線「谷上」駅または、神戸高速鉄道「新開地」駅から神戸電鉄「有馬口」駅乗り換え、神戸電鉄有馬線「有馬温泉」駅 続きを読む

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