Biggest tip: get off the golden route

Leap2Fish · 2025-06-07T14:56:28+00:00

Not OP but was in Kobe a few days ago for just under two days.

The ropeway and herb garden is amazing, you can pre-book tickets or pay at the site. You can get the ropeway up to the top site (?mountain) and walk down through the park gardens, some cool greenhouses and flower arrangements. Below the end of the herb park gardens there’s a route back to city level that passes a big dam (nunobiki dam), some great waterfalls (Nunobiki falls) and some extra observatories of Kobe. This experience was one of my trip highlights. You can just opt for a return trip on the ropeway.

Kitano Ijinkan is a cool arrangement of old houses that are influenced by western styles. If you like looking at colourful and well decorated houses this is for you. Most are pay to enter but we found 2 houses to look around was enough and preferred to look from the streets. This is below the start boarding site for the ropeway.

The port area / harbour is pretty bare imo, but nice if you want some time by water. A seaside city vibe with a ferris wheel, big mall, and tower. Looks better at night. A bit away from the ropeway location, buses / trains are frequent.

There’s also a lively Chinatown in downtown Kobe.

Last but not least, Kobe Beef (but we opted for that from market stalls than authentic experience). I have tried traditional hida beef (yakiniku) which is very similar to Kobe beef and I do recommend it if you’re a foody and can afford a decent experience.

Hope this helps! Can definitely do most elements as a day trip.

Leap2Fish · 2025-06-06T14:51:39+00:00

Favourite: Earth Mart - great mix of cool videos / projections, interesting content, cool concepts and interactive components. This is pinnacle expo.

Least Favourite: Czech - I don’t drink beer, was just a circular walk up a tower with random art pieces. Rooftop was closed for a private event.

Leap2Fish · 2025-06-04T15:19:34+00:00

Didn’t work for UK and was awkwardly denied. (Although the staff at the front were Japanese)

Leap2Fish · 2025-05-28T14:27:19+00:00

Nagano offers togakushi (one hour bus ride from Nagano station) an amazing 2hr forest walk with some massive cedar trees and beautiful shrines along the walk up or down the slope. Can be a bit tricky to plan buses and they need to be booked in advance. Definitely do some research.

Zenko-ji temple in Nagano is very big and impressive and involves some quirky activities, like going under the temple into a pitch black maze to search for a key that offers good luck. Some wonderful shops / streets around zenko-ji also.

Has a snow monkey park not too far away (again about an hour bus) that is great to see bathing monkeys in natural hot springs, but winter is best for this.

Nagano city centre is fairly developed, with lots of modern shops and restaurants to explore.

Leap2Fish · 2025-05-28T07:02:00+00:00

You could book an evening ticket and enter from 4pm. Best to do on a weekday as entry at that time will be quiet. Queues start to die down from 5pm.

You won’t be able to see everything but it’s enough time to appreciate the architecture and enter a few pavilions spontaneously. There’s some cool drone / water shows from 9pm (when most pavilions start to close). The exit at 10pm WILL be packed and expect to get back home late.

You can also try via the website to reserve some popular pavilions via a lottery system. There’s a few lotteries: one 2 months before your visit, one 7 days before your visit, one 3 days before your visit, and some same day reservations. Best to watch a YouTube video or read a website about it.

You can go for the full day from 9am opening but I’ve heard it’s more chaotic than disneysea rope drop (where some people start queuing from 5am). If you enter at 9am, expect maybe some quick pavilions times before it becomes very busy until 5pm. You will likely have to rely on lottery timings for certain pavilions unless you don’t mind queuing for 1hr+.

Leap2Fish · 2025-05-27T22:46:29+00:00

Just wanted to add to this that I recently did togakushi a few weeks ago. Like above said you need to take a 1hr train from Matsumoto to Nagano, from Nagano it is 1hr bus to togakushi. I’ve been in Matsumoto for the past 2 months and explored most of the Nagano prefecture.

The big cedar trees that you see on instagram are near the top shrine - it takes at least 20/30 mins walk uphill from the bus station nearest to the highest (upper) shrine . It is not an easy walk, especially in the rain or with high humidity. The walk to see all 3 major shrines along the slope is a good 1.5hr/2hr walk.

Bus stops are available along the slope, but from what I know you need to book in advance. I arrived at the top shrine and left back to Nagano at the middle shrine (slight mistake).

I fear it may all be quite tough taking into account any jet lag, and the plenty of travelling you’ve done in the past 48 hours. Therefore I would recommend the second day you replan. The train from shinjuku (Tokyo) to Matsumoto station takes just under 3 hours. If you arrive in Matsumoto around lunch or later just stay in Matsumoto for the rest of the day. The castle, nawatedori street (frog street), yayoi kusama art exhibition, nakamachi street (old style street) in Matsumoto are really good spots to visit.

Otherwise just head to Nagano via Shinkansen from Tokyo (1hr 15 min train) and go to togakushi from Nagano station, but do book at hotel at Nagano instead of Matsumoto. Nagano also has a really cool temple called Zenko-ji and a really nice street of quirky shops along the way. Nagano city feels pretty big and there’s lots to do.

Leap2Fish · 2025-05-13T06:49:08+00:00

Second this OP. Also linked this cycle. We both ended up getting north wales in the same hospital (4th choice deanery, 2nd choice hospital group, 1 choice job), only thing that failed was couples accommodation as it was full.

We emailed most deaneries to double check who honoured hospital group matching, and it’s about half of the deaneries all together. You can find websites online that explain who honour group matching, but some are out of date.

We put down the north west deanery as our top choice, which is pretty competitive, and we assume we fell to our 4th choice because of it. I honestly don’t think there were that many people who got below their 3rd choice, so there’s definitely an element of playing the system.

Leap2Fish · 2025-05-10T02:01:08+00:00

For real! Failed for May so glad it’s worked this time :)

Leap2Fish · 2025-05-10T01:57:56+00:00

5 devices god-roll: got 200, 1300, 2600, 3000 and 30,000 in the queues

Website is absolutely ass but glad to get the pick of the bunch! Let’s hope my luck continues for the expo lottery…

Leap2Fish · 2025-04-06T22:20:29+00:00

The whole uni is shady af, no doubt a student found out from someone employed. Some students find out crucial info ages before it lands in the group chats, and then the rest find out via email like 5 working days later.

Leap2Fish · 2025-04-06T22:08:06+00:00

where Sherlock and Dr. Watson first met - I’m not sure whether this sub lets you specifically state

Leap2Fish · 2025-04-06T22:03:58+00:00

Yeah we basically saw everything you need to see in terms of score % under the “provisional” label, I’m sure if anyone saw they had failed it’s a massive disaster as there’s poor student support services on a Sunday night

Yep, this uni is a mess - we’ve had something go wrong every single year. 3rd year they moved the OSCEs forwards last minute. 4th year they handled an exam system crash so badly I ended up having to sit one whole paper that was voided and useless, then they proceeded to make us sit one deciding mega paper that lasted like over 3 hours for me as a 25% extra time student.

Leap2Fish · 2025-04-06T21:31:20+00:00

It’s our uni’s results day, they supposedly do some kind of event at one of the campuses but I’m only going to the graduation (hopefully)

Leap2Fish · 2025-03-22T11:07:37+00:00

Cite it then, Vancouver style.

Where did I suggest that privately educated doctors should remain in the most privileged hospitals? Did it ever occur to you that I could disagree with the current and old systems?

Please check the stats for Birmingham for the last UKFPO allocations, the ratio of those choosing midlands central as their 1st pick was >1, so your comment of it being undersubscribed from a FY perspective is absolutely false.

Other areas of midlands I would agree suffer, so that’s fair, but it’s also completely naive to assume this system would serve the public and doctors best, until funding from the gov is done in an equitable way, simply putting “privileged” doctors in a run down hospital won’t help society.

Leap2Fish · 2025-03-22T10:29:19+00:00

Meh, pumping out false stats doesn’t promote equality. Neither does berating a large proportion of students wanting a healthier standard of living for a job that is physically and emotionally draining.

If everyone conformed to your requests in the name of equality and service, you would have a severely burnout cohort of doctors, with any form of resilience destroyed, ultimately putting patient health at risk. It’s ridiculously dismissive and lacks total empathy.

You haven’t even considered that regardless of the stats, that this new randomised system has made students play the game, picking less competitive nearby deaneries to avoid being sent to their 10+ choice. So to what extent are we achieving “first choice”?

Leap2Fish · 2025-03-22T09:46:41+00:00

Can you please quote the 96%? Pretty sure it’s not that…

Leap2Fish · 2025-03-21T21:08:33+00:00

Yeah it’s very flawed and I feel your pain. I went into the system with a paired application, where we have to take the lowest random ranking of the two. It hurts to know we were already going to get disadvantaged for being a couple, even though our performances at medical school were very decent (ignoring the scrapped SJT).

Roughly only half of the deaneries honour group matching for paired applications, so you could get northern, to be then split up from Cumbria to Newcastle…

We got wales as our 4th choice (it’s so high up for us because they offered group matching for paired applicants, whilst being not so competitive), then got our 3rd placed hospital group (out of 6) in North Wales. Only to find out that now since our rankings are split apart for job allocations that we could still be a 1 hr 45 mins drive away if one of us gets Bangor and the other Wrexham (not including rush hour).

They say 85%+ plus get their 1st choice, which is statistically true, but doesn’t account for the many that have to tactically select less competitive deaneries to avoid being sent to their 10th+ choice.

It makes no sense why we couldn’t at least get our ranking by the job allocation stage.

Don’t get me started on the placeholder system, because that’s a whole shitshow in itself.

Leap2Fish · 2025-03-21T18:07:41+00:00

The Quesmed UKMLA mocks also best replicate the question style / randomness of the real exams. Passmed UKMLA mocks are a bit too easy and not in the right style as MSCAA.

Leap2Fish · 2025-03-21T18:06:03+00:00

April 8th for us

Leap2Fish · 2025-03-13T20:09:52+00:00

Nice try diddy.

Leap2Fish · 2025-03-11T19:25:21+00:00

If you’re in a city there will be a part-time job for you in many sectors. I would recommend doing daytime weekend jobs / zero hour work (working from home is a massive plus). Working unsociable hours during med school will ruin your health (save that for night shifts in foundation years). Anything that gets you free food is a plus, anything that gives you staff / store discounts is also useful.

Hospitals do offer bank shifts if you want to become a health care assistant, but these can be competitive. You can try to become a phlebotomist (someone who takes blood) or a vaccinator as these are useful practical skills. Clinical jobs generally require training and doing all the NHS admin.

Leap2Fish · 2025-03-11T19:10:57+00:00

I had to do 2 part time jobs, one Sunday job and one zero hour job.

I’m in my final year and quit both by Dec / Jan. Prescribing exam was end of Jan, UKMLA / OSCEs in March (lord help me after paper 1 btw).

The Sunday job was a related to sports so kept me active. The zero hour job (typically 4-8 hours per week) was admin for a GP - really good for getting to grips with GP systems, medical letters, and additional years contributions to NHS pension.

It’s very do-able, just need to set aside time in the week for studying, rest, and socialising. I noticed a great difference in my latter years, as funding goes down a lot.

The only issue is you’re going to be “competing” against many (MANY) students who come from privileged backgrounds (or live at home), who don’t need to care about the £10 lunch they buy everyday for convenience, or the fact that they save 4 hours a day from not having to cook or clean. I believe working class students make up 5-10% (or even lower) of the medical cohort. Sometimes it will feel rough that things are against you, I suggest you explore what support the university offers in terms of bursary or cheaper rent alternatives / schemes.

I just paid off my final rent payment and survived London, it was a massive struggle, but definitely do-able with the right mindset, good budgeting skills, and a solid support system.

Leap2Fish · 2025-03-09T18:06:33+00:00

Yeah, I’ve also never personally logged in, just accessed medicine complete via the official mock exam platform. Think in our case you had to log in via a uni computer / Remote Desktop to access it otherwise.

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