20 July 2009

Emily came into bed with us sometime after dawn and then slept until 8.15. She was very moody all day, with frequent tears. Also, she is not drinking enough so her nappies are hardly wet at all and she has a sore bottom as what urine there is is too strong. A dilemma - how do we get her to drink enough? Breakfast was a disaster: it was very busy so we had to wait though Emily was very hungry, there was no baby chair available, and Emily refused her cereal and would barely deign to eat one small roll with jam and a handful of fruit. There was no chance for us to enjoy a leisurely breakfast, despite paying 1,000 yen (six pounds) each for it.

We quickly packed and checked out, as we were due to meet Mr Murase at the station at 10.30. He came with Ryou (Rena was at home studying with Miho). Emily was very excited to see the 'boy' again. We walked over to take the nearby ropeway up to the Nunobiki Herb Garden. The ride took about 10 minutes and we quickly ascended high above the city, yet again getting glorious, if hazy, views over Kobe and out to sea.

At the bottom it had been quite hot and humid but by the time we got to the top it was a lot more comfortable and I hardly needed to employ my sweat cloth.

The herb garden is a lovely attraction, with some pretty displays of flowers and herbs. It spreads hundreds of metres down the hill to the middle ropeway station. There's quite an English feel to it, with woven baskets of dried herbs and even a large Victorian-style dolls' house. Emily loved running around after Ryou though there were some bouts of tears as she got overexcited or fell over in her rush to follow him. He was very solicitous of her welfare and sometimes held her hand or picked her up.

Halfway down were some large glass structures and they housed a beautiful water feature; a stream ran through the centre over stone in which pieces of white coral were embedded. It grew until it came out in a pool, which was just too tempting for Emily. She was straight in and got her clothes very wet. We took in another fabulous view from the large patio outside and then continued down the winding paths through more beds of herbs and a fragrance garden full of huge headily-scented lillies.

Just before the middle station was Wind Hill, a grassy knoll where we all wandered around in the clover and Emily used up her final reserves of energy. As we rode the ropeway back to the base it began to rain a little, so we had timed our visit just right. We walked back through the mall, where we narrowly avoided Bornelund toy store (luckily Emily didn't spot that they had a Kid-O-Kid play area too) but did let her play briefly on a large wooden train. We reluctantly pulled her away so that we could get some lunch before returning to the station.

Mr Murase's choice of restaurant was great: an all-you-can-eat buffet of tofu and vegetables prepared in a wide variety of styles. Emily liked Ryou's slippery, fat udon noodles. Nick and I had seconds then thirds before we ran out of time.

The train journey was one of two halves. Emily dropped off to sleep on me straight away. But when she woke an hour later she got upset very quickly. The offer of a walk through the carriages didn't do the trick this time, and no amount of pointing interesting things out through the window could stave off the tears. We took it in turns to hold her in the area between carriages, as her crying would have made the whole car annoyed. She was throwing herself around and her face was a mess of snot, dribble and tears. She was obviously totally fed up with being confined and the proof was that she brightened up as soon as we got off. Once at home she played happily, and then we all ate dinner together. Nick and I had a really early night, which we felt we needed after the journey.