This was kind of interesting. It's the first time I have seen a Coke machine with a video in it. The video was playing Coke commercials along with an educational tape that showed how to use your phone to purchase a Coke (that's right, you don't even need change to buy a Coke in Japan. Just swipe your cell phone and out comes a Coke.)

I came across a new manhole cover design while wandering around town:

You can tell it's spring not only by the time, but also by all the flowers around the clock

One thing that I like about Kobe is that there are random sculptures all over the place. I took about a 20 minute walk from the immigration office to the train station the other day and these are all the sculptures I came across along the way:

I came across this wall in a park - all the bricks tiles in the wall are the hands of children:

Some more of the decorative manholes I came across recently (I get really strange looks from people when I stop to take photos of these )

This weekend the cherry blossom were out so my wife and I took a day to go cherry blossom viewing. Neither of us likes the crowds of the main places that people gather to view them, so we headed out to the countryside and found a river lines with them without hardly another person around:

You know that it's springtime in Japan because the cherry blossoms are out and ever conceivable thing in Japan has that theme - including cherry blossom rice wine (sake)

I love the signs in Japan

As you might imagine, parking in Japan is always a challenge. Often they will stack cars as in this photo:

I was wandering around Kobe this weekend when I came across a memorial for the Great Hanshin earthquake that happened in 1995 - believe it or not, I was there for it. Although I lived a bit outside the disaster zone, I was there within a few days in order to help my wife's aunt. It is certainly a natural disaster that I hope I never have to live through again...

I was wandering the other day when I came across all these old pachinko machines!