For some reason this poster for an all Japanese cast of Wicked cracked me up no end. I have no idea why.

I was so impressed that this Canadian actress is being featured in movie poster in Kobe! If you haven't seen Whip It yet you should because that is what this is for!

Taken on my first day in Kobe.

Japan has pretty gardens

Stairway of mystery

Small shrine (I think). These little things we everywhere!

Koi fish are oddly shy. I was lucky to catch this one on camera.

At first I thought the turtles were statues until one moved. Turtles are extremely slow. Who knew?

I have never seen such colorful dragonflies in Canada. This one is blue although I saw bright red and green as well

Enormous shrine thing! Tiny dinosaur is placed there for perspective.

After exploring downtown Kobe I decided to relax in a Japanese garden for a little. It's amazing how peaceful it is in there. You're only steps away from the hustle and bustle of a major city and yet you can barely tell from inside the garden. I never enjoyed myself so much looking at foliage.

Pretty things from Kobe!

Still my first day in Kobe. I was very impressed with all the random prettiness in the city. This is a sewer grate and look how nice it is! Everything is decorated! At least in the city centre most likely to be seen by tourists, but still! There will be more sewer grates in the coming pictures :)

Japan - More day 1

The entrance to Kobe's Chinatown. Toronto could definitely learn something here as the Chinatown there is clearly marked and beautiful. Chinatown in Toronto is only obvious from the sudden appearance of signs in Kanji. Tourist wise it would be really nice to have something more obvious to find it.

For comparison you can see there's a person in the lower right corner. This thing is huge!

Japan

So I've finally decided to put up photos of that cool trip I took. This is from my first full day in Japan after getting in around 10PM the night before. I spent the day wandering around Kobe trying to find a bank machine, food and cool things to do before rushing around the country in general

I'm not sure if you can make it out but the name of the restaurant is Alberta Alberta and it's a sushi restaurant. I found this place hilarious if only because my mother's family is from Alberta and I don't think I could ever picture someone from Alberta eating sushi. Not enough cow and too much seaweed for their likin'!

Intro!

A rather presumptuous title isn't it? I took the idea from a comment from my boyfriend and how my frequent visits to the library were a quest for all knowledge. He has a point in that I almost never go to the library to read books about anything relating to my career or degree, I just take out books that strike my fancy and they are almost always non-fiction. I just want to learn about the world and how it works. If the book has pretty pictures all the better :)

This blog has no real overarching theme. I wish it did. This blog is more likely to have a more random approach much like the state of my mind and my 'Quest'. I tend to focus intensely on one subject for a time and then wander off to a completely different topic mostly at random. I hope you enjoy the crazy :)