After an overnight flight from Singapore to Osaka and an hours' bus ride post that, today I got to Rokko Island in Kobe, Japan. This is my second visit to this place (on work both times) and I remember the exact words my manager told me, before my first visit, when I asked him what Rokko Island is like. His exact words were "It is sinfully the most boring island on earth." And am happy to let you know that, it is still the same.
What you need to know about Rokko Island is that it is jam packed with buildings but with hardly any humans around. I went to the biggest mall in town and it had like 5 people in it including myself. In other words, to me, Rokko Island is a ghost town.
But ghost town or not, Japan is still Japan. One is still fascinated by the ultra sophisticated toilet bowls (I can live without the 10 different options for water sprays and bidets but if only we had the warm seat option in other cold countries), the cute nap time kimonos (even though not very fashion savvy since it has "Sheraton Kobe Bay" written all over) and the absolute surprise of hearing a Hindi song in a mall where I was the only Indian!
And something else, on top of all the above fascinations, made the day pretty special. Rokko Island might be boring but what it does offer, is the Indian Restaurant that sells the Best Naan Ever. Called "Nanak from New Delhi", it was a discovery I made during my previous visit. You might think that it is pretty silly for me to travel to Japan to eat Indian food. But you need to eat this Naan to believe it. I have not had a better piece of Naan ever - not in Singapore, not in India, no where in the world. So today after work, I set out in the cold in search of Nanak, armed with Ken Follett's 'World Without End'. My keen sense of memory and direction took me there without much trouble. And I, once again, had the Best Naan Ever, accompanied by a dish of brinjal and eggs. The cold, the silence, the book, the Naan. It was perfect.
998 more days to go.
No comments:
Post a Comment