4 November 2017
Surprisingly great
The bustling harborside area of Kobe
As I mentioned above, I have been to Kobe twice before but never stayed here. I think I have always gone to Sannomiya station and then headed up the hill to climb the mountain, so I have never been to the city area before at all.
It is great! Much much bigger than I thought.
Whilst I am sure Sannomiya is the main department store area, the bay area where I went tonight and its underground shopping passages was so large and interesting I never made it to the main part of town.
The harbour town area is very modern and full of restaurants and new expensive looking buildings, there is also a big ferris wheel, big dinner cruise boats, a huge maritime museum, lines of people which I joined, and everything is lit up.
Then back near my hotel, its the biggest most interesting red light district I have ever seen in Japan, not a lot of people, but a huge number of very big, establishments? Not sure what to call them, they are hotel sized and much more blatant than similar areas of Tokyo. They have menus printed on large posters with photos and prices!
And joining everything together is covered shopping streets, mostly closed after dark, but I think I passed 20 different ones, and havent really been anywhere yet.
So yes, Kobe surprised me a lot.
A few other things -
1. There are no tourists, not on a Saturday night anyway. I saw none, well maybe some Japanese tourists but no white people or even any Chinese that I noticed.
2. They sell Pepsi. I hunted high and low in Tokyo and Osaka for zero calorie pepsi, and couldnt find it. Here its in both Family Mart and 7-eleven. Imagine going to somewhere in Australia where they stock coke but not pepsi or vice versa in entire cities.
3. They are really proud of their beef, but no amount of pride is going to make me pay for it.
4. The stores not only sell banana chips, but sell them in a variety of sizes, pepsi and banana chips, I can retire here.
5. Little old men waving lit up batons to direct traffic are out of control. They are on every corner for no reason, there is no traffic, there are more people directing traffic than cars. Is it a work for the dole scheme? It just seems hilarious that when I have a walk signal a man will walk out into the road with nothing coming, do a special baton waving dance, talk on the headset in his ear, blow a whistle, and wave me across. Enjoy your debt to GDP ratio Japan.
At first I was underwhelmed, this is a shopping street, uncovered, near my hotel. Every few metres theres a man with a glowing baton.
I descended, and found a huge underground mall, but also these 3 archery targets on the ground. I worked out all they can be for is the world lawn darts championship, without a lawn.
I came up out of the underground in the harbourside area, and was greeted by lots of modern looking buildings and twinkling lights.
Oh, and a full moon and a ferris wheel. I couldnt get a shot without cars here.
Not a great photo, mainly here for my mother, I am standing on a shopping centre and theres a heap more across the road and under the ground.
The colorful harbour. The green lit building on the right is the maritime museum, it appears to be very large.
Moon lighting clouds. I tried some longer exposures here but found a shorter one worked better.
Then a dinner cruise pulled up. There was a crush of people trying to take a photo of it.
My dinner was awesome. There is a specific name for this but I forget what it is. There is an alcohol fuelled candle thing under the cast iron bowl.
This continues to cook whats in the bowl, and makes the rice go a bit crunchy. I ate it too fast to experience the full effect.
You can choose from lots of things, mine was beef and vegetables.
I waited here for over 30 minutes in a line, hence I never even got to Sannomiya this evening.
There are about 50 restaurants in this complex which are the old dock warehouse sheds.
Theres also a fun park for children, but you dont need to use that, just go to this mall with crazy escalators. Its quite a weird sensation.
Underneath is a very huge premium aeon supermarket. Its an upmarket version, not your standard aeon. There are 3 places to sit and eat inside the supermarket, including a pizza restaurant.
Also you can just buy the ready meals and sit and eat them, pick and choose from the sushi etc. This is a contender for best supermarket ever! I think that honor still goes to the Lotus supermarket in Pudong, Shanghai.
And finally, heres one of the closed covered shopping streets. I really cant understand how there are so many of them here? Either side of this one is a huge red light district. I am frightened to take photos there, there are enormous men out the front of every place with ear pieces in looking angry.
As promised, here is the lighting situation in my room. You can only control the main light with this remote. It took me ages to figure this out!
I have wondered before what the point of the stupid big round fluro lights are that take up entire floors in electronics shops. In those shops they have them all turned to full white, full bright.
With the remote you can control not only how bright it is, but also its color, and now I want one!
Final shot this evening, I climbed out my window onto the fire escape to perch my camera on a rail for a long exposure.
I dont really think I was supposed to do that! I could walk all the way along the metal gangway and look in peoples windows.