Kobayashi Station: We walked on further enjoying the nice weather and we came to Kobayashi-eki (trainstation) where I decided to get some photos of the outside of the train station (on day 7 page 1 you can see the platform). If you look on the left side of the photo you might notice a cow, I think this is advertising the cow farm (see day 3 page 3). It is actually a phone booth.1 There is also probably a souvenir shop in the train station near the phone booth, so someone who is on a business trip and didn't have enough time to go up the hill to the actual cow farm can buy some souvenirs of before catching the train back to wherever they came from.
Now you might be wondering why are there all of these strange souvenirs? The reason is that the Japanese custom for going on any kind of trip (business or otherwise) is to buy lots of small gifts for friends, family, and colleges. Normally this means buying small edible treats of local produce. Conveniently every transport hub (in Japan) contains at least one shop that sells gift boxes of local produce for those last minute purchases. I guess it is another good way of providing more jobs for people.
After the train station we went to the record shop again, this time I bought some traditional Japanese music known as "Enka". Ritsuko's mum likes Enka, but Ritsuko hates it, as do most young people in Japan. The singers name is Ayako Fuji and she is one of the most popular Female Enka singers.
Click her to view a website with a photo of and information about Ayako Fuji.
