kobeintern

Today, Wednesday was basically a day off. I spent the morning working on previous day’s blog. I am beginning to realize the Single Origin Coffee that I had brought from the U.S. will probably run out. Then what? So I began a search for supplier.

I searched online and came across a shop that was promising. In addition to the language difficulty (more cultural in the way websites are organized and laid out) I could not find if they had storefront that I could walk in and make the purchase. So I asked Deacon Miyata with whom I feel connected. He showed me that they do have storefronts.

In the afternoon, I made the trip to Sannomiya where the closest store was located. It takes about 20 minutes’ walk through Motomachi, over to Sannomiya. So many small shops and many shuttered stores as well.

The other day I noticed a whole block of stores under the railroad track was shuttered – not one store open. I asked Deacon Miyata about it, and he explained to me that the elevated railroad survived the 1995 Great Awaji-Hanshin Earthquake, but it would not survive another, and the City was planning to redo the support beams and the tracks with better design to survive major earthquakes, and they needed the tenants to move out during the work.

The Japanese have learned that you can’t fight mother nature, and as they say, “come hell or high water,” er, rather come earthquakes or typhoons, they must respect nature and live with this reality. The name of the game is how to survive.

With better technology and science, they can design better infrastructures that would not break under stress. When an earthquake strikes a distant city, Japan now provides through TV a countdown that tells exact second the ground will shake as an early warning (though this does not work if you’re at the epicenter of the earthquake, but it’s better than nothing).

I hope that this work will begin and be done soon so that the shop owners can come back to a safer store, and that the commuters will feel more confident about their future commutes!

I found the store and purchased a bag of Arabian Mocha from Yemen. I previously had an exquisite tasting but expensive Yemeni coffee before, so I expected it to be exceptional. Well, it did not meet my expectation, but not many coffee does. So I’ll work on finishing this batch and move along to another shop when this is finished.