11 March 2012
Kobe
I awoke to bright sunshine, despite the forecast of rain. I thought I had better make the most of it and head to the other nearby city of Kobe.
Like most of Japan, Kobe suffered a major earthquake in its past. In Kobe's case, it was relatively recently in 1995, killing 6,500 people. Upon researching that stat I found out this was in fact the worst earthquake in Japan since 1923, which I find surprising as I thought every 10 years or so on average they had some sort of earthquake taking out 100,000 people.
Getting there is easy, and cheaper than getting to Kyoto despite being about the same distance.
My brief internet research before leaving told me that theres a cable / rope car to Mount Rokko. Sounds good to me.
I like to document every kind of transport I use. Today I went on a suburban bus from the Rokko station on the Hanyu line to the Mount Rokko cable car station.
The cable car itself is a staircase. Its also very old. Much like the trams that go to the peak in Hong Kong. At the top of this mountain is the oldest golf course in all of Japan, the cable car was built to ferry rich white people up to it.
Like all such things, you can never capture the slope with a photo.
My research suggested its not possible to walk up here unless you walk up the twisty road and risk being hit by tour busses. Which sounds more fun than it probably is.
There was no driver or conductor on this, the ride takes a good 15 minutes.
The view from top allows you to take in not only Kobe as seen here but Osaka on the other side. The bright sunshine of the morning was replaced by hazy cloud the moment I got to the top.
More view.
Still more view. It was -2 degrees up here and quite windy at times. Still I was excited because I like mountains.
Also, picture number 100!
Snow! The last of the snow. I could see some more substantial bits but couldnt really photograph them. Every patch I saw I decided to turn into yellow snow.
There were a lot of secret large houses up here, behind big gates and driveways, hard to photograph, but all of them seemed strangely abandoned. There are also big places like this, which have falling down advertisements for their restaurants and clubs etc. I never saw another person.
There is no English signage, the maps lacked a YOU ARE HERE pointer, and many map signs were so badly weathered you couldnt read them. So I decided just to try my luck, knowing I might have to double back. At times I thought I might be on someones driveway, and sometimes the path was covered in so much debris and leaf matter it was hard to tell if it was the path.
However I eventually looped back and took this photo to celebrate, I look very wind swept.
Bonus view.
Back at the cable car station, a few people have attached locks to things just like they do in Korea.
Downtown Kobe is all shiny and new looking, probably rebuilt since the earthquake.
The entire city is on a slope into the enormous harbour at the bottom of the hill. Theres also an airport built on a man made island much like the Osaka airport. Looking at a map the Kobe airport seems to be closer to Osaka than the Kansai airport.
More covered arcades. This one had cafe land coming off of it, which was actually really good. The food in all these cafes looked great and it was a bit rustic, no Yoshinoya or Sukiya to be seen, just what appeared to be indepedently run shops. There were 10 places I might have liked to have lunch.
I decided on pyramid curry, mainly because of the egyptian theme that made no sense at all, plus I could see what the guy was cooking and what other people were eating.
Also they had a sign claiming to serve a genuine Kobe beef steak with your curry. This turned out to be true. The meal was fantastic, its much bigger than it seems in the photo with a fairly sizeable steak cut into 4 pieces.
The guy did his best to ask in Japanese English if I wanted it spicy, I told him very spicy and made lots of hand movements. He got really excited by this. To his credit he actually made it spciy! Very delicious. I congratulated him on a fine meal, he seemed genuinely thrilled at the compliment, following me half way down the alley way thanking me, bowing profusely.
Great food and service for about $8, similar price to the coco chain that gives you a watery mess with no meat in it.