In The 'Hood

A busy day in the 'hood today. In the Kitano neighbourhood, that is. First off, there was the Kobe Global Charity Festival with the kids' fancy dress parade up Tor Road. Given it's late October, we made the (in hindsight, wrong) assumption that it would be a Halloween fancy dress parade and went the whole nine yards to kit Jessica out as a scary witch.

She maybe did not thank us, then, as she joined the merry throng of Disney Princesses, Buzz Lightyears and Pirates of the Caribbean making their way up the hill to the Kobe Club...

There was a potential silver lining, however, as my make-up handiwork brought me to the attention of the organising staff who asked me if I would like to do the kids' face-painting. I politely declined (as I can only do scary witches), but I must say it did cross my mind that it could be an attractive proposition in a year's time when I've had chance to think of something a bit more subversive. Perhaps political despots through the ages, in disguise. Hitler would be a bit difficult, but maybe Stalin as a cat? Or Chairman Mao as a panda?

The event itself was worthy, but just a bit too Peace and Love, punctuated by some crazy Australian dancer/mime artist who mystified everyone - kids included - with her bizarre and erratic dance performance (part of which involved a hat featuring a half-full bottle of mineral water - go figure...). All of which was nicely juxtaposed by a Japanese lady wearing a shirt emblazoned with the words 'Ace Military Death'.

We eventually had to do a runner from a German guy who was pestering us about earthworms. His sales pitch was a sharp one though. Starting off with "You have a baby, you must be interested in preserving the planet?" (errr... yes?), he thrust a questionnaire into our hands: Do you recycle? Do you want to save the planet? Do you want to... (substitute some other worthy cause here)? Do you want to keep earthworms? Of course, laudable as it might be to have 'the Lexus of composting units on your balcony', we had to swerve this one. Besides, we've got Jack, and he's proving to be an exceptionally efficient composting unit right now.

In the afternoon we explored the 'Ijinkan Residences' of Kitano. Kobe was one of the very first Japanese cities to be populated by foreign settlers, and in the late nineteenth century westerners began to build their palatial homes on Kitano's hillside.

Of wooden construction and looking decidedly colonial, the 'gaijin manshuns' are interesting only in so far as they are incongruous, but they don't really stand the test of time. We took a look around the English House. A very brief look, actually, for our 1400 yen, as about 4 minutes after we purchased our tickets, we were overrun by a Japanese wedding party, who proceeded to occupy all available rooms, including the one with the flea-bitten moose-head (of which you don't get so many in England, actually).

Sadly, it's just 'quite a big house'. Paint peeling, overall a bit tatty and crammed with a pot-pourri of 'English' paraphanalia of dubious provenance, including a Beefeater and a suit of armour. And we thought we were the only ones peddling this sort of nonsense? Not so, it seems...