Kobe

Adam and I went to Kobe on Saturday.  It was a full day!  We took a train at 7:00 am and arrived in Kobe a little after 9:30am.  Thankfully, we were able to sit the whole ride despite the trains being very full.  It’s amazing how many people are going places early on a Saturday morning. 

Our first stop was the Hakutsuru Sake Brewery.  As we were walking from the station to the brewery, lo and behold a Catholic Church!  Now, if you’re travelling in Europe and you come across a Catholic Church it’s no surprise.  In fact, you’d be more surprised not to see one.  But in Japan, to come across a Catholic Church is special!  The church was open too, so we were able to spend some time with Jesus.  After leaving the church, getting lost, asking for directions, finding our way, we arrived at the sake brewery.  There’s 4 or 5 breweries in the area, but this one had good reviews.  They have a free museum that shows how sake used to be made and how it’s made now.  They had English pamphlets and English videos!  Making sake was a lot of work and quite the work out too; now, they get machines to do most of the work.  After we learned about the sake making process, we came to the end of the museum.  Before you exit, there’s a gift shop with free sake tasting.  We tasted 4 different kinds of sake.  Two were normal kinds, one was lemon sake, and the last one was plum sake.  This might have been the highlight of my day, partly because the information was in English and because it’s such a unique experience specific to Japan.

St. Paul Miki

Peach Blossoms 

Hakutsuru Brewery Museum

No, these guys aren't real.  

That's a big barrel.

Cooling the rice

Packaging the sake

They would put the rice in these bags and then press them.
The liquid (sake) coming out would go through this strainer.  

We jumped back on the train and rode into downtown Kobe.  We have this train pass (Seishun 18) that allows unlimited train travel on local trains for one day and we really made good use of it since they have local trains running within Kobe every five minutes.  We also used the pass to get to Kobe and back to Tarui.  We got off the train and walked to city hall.  I felt like I was in Europe.  I think I tend to feel like that when the weather is nice, I’m in a big city, and there’s people all around. Anyways, at city hall you can go up to the 24^th floor and there’s an observation deck for free.  You don’t get the whole 360 degree view, but you can look out towards the ocean and the mountains. 

On our way to City Hall.

Next, we walked to the Merikan Park port area and had a picnic lunch.  In 1995, Kobe had a really bad earthquake.  Over 6000 people died and it caused a lot of damage.  We had our picnic right by a little outdoor museum explaining the earthquake and the rebuilding process.  They have an area that they didn’t rebuild so that people can see how devastating the earthquake was.

Area that they didn't rebuild.

Then, we went to the Kobe Maritime Museum which really wasn’t worthwhile.  They have a section on Kawasaki since it started in Kobe, but even that wasn’t as impressive as the reviews sounded.  If you had little kids it might be a cool place to go to.  In fact, we might have been the only people there without children.  I think the fact that all the kids were busy doing the interactive parts of displays made us feel a little sheepish about trying them out.  Imagine: two foreign white adults waiting in a line of kids to get to try something. J  One interesting thing I learned at the museum was that back in the 12^th century the Shogun at the time ordered an island to be built off of Kobe.  That island is still being used as part of the port.  I just thought it was funny, like why would you order an island to be built?  The model they had of the island-building made it seem even funnier.  The Shogun was twice the size of any of the other people in the display and he had an angry face.  No one else had a face and they were all working hard moving rocks while being ordered on by the angry Shogun.  Maybe there was more of an explanation in Japanese as to why the island was built.

Kawasaki motorcycle

 At this same Meriken Park area, they have a giant mall.  It’s kind of cool and also extremely overwhelming especially with so many people all around.  We bought Adam some sunglasses and left.

Kobe Tower

Between buildings inside the mall.

Our last stop of the day was Suma Beach.  I had a few other things planned, but we didn’t have the time or energy for them.  We just hung out at the beach and ate our supper.  It was a relaxing way to end the day and get away from the noise of downtown Kobe.  We listened to the waves come in and watched the fish jump and believe me, they were doing a lot of jumping.  Every few seconds, we’d see them jumping all over the place.

 I had planned for us to go see this suspension bridge that has the longest central span of any suspension bridge in the world at 1.9km.  The whole bridge is 3.9km.  We could see part of it from Suma beach and were both satisfied.

On Sunday, we were invited over to a friend’s house for lunch.  They had a takoyaki party.  Takoyaki is an octopus dough ball.  As you can see we also got to taste a bunch of other delicious dishes.  The other people we met could speak English too, so it was a nice social event for us.

Takoyaki being cooked.