Travelling: Kobe

Kobe was always on my list of places to visit in Japan. I'd heard good things about it before coming to Japan, and then more good things from other people while in the country. It seemed to be just a nice place - a large city (not unusual in Japan), fairly vibrant, good to walk around and not too far from Osaka if you want some more travelling. It was almost chance then, that the woman (friend of a friend) who kindly showed my family and I around Kyoto when they came to visit lives in Kobe, and kindy offered to give me a tour of the place for one weekend in June. So I took some time out of studying (or cramming if you prefer) for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test the following weekend and paid the city a visit.

Once off the shinkansen, I met up with Mrs Ketano and her daughter, Ikuko, who would kindly show me around. The first place they took me to was the nearby Ijinkan ("Different-People's Homes"). Kobe was one of the first places in Japan to attempt to integrate with foreigners, and it was only in Kobe that foreigners were allowed to own property and businesses outside of a strictly controlled "foreign zone" found in most other cities. Kobe still holds that reputation for being both well integrated and fairly multicultural as a result, and also home to a large number of foreign tourists and residents. Naturally the first Ijinkan we looked at was the British one, which even had a lawn (grass for the sake of it is rare in Japan), even if the inside had been transformed into some sort of Sherlock Holmes museum.

Next stop was a trek up Kobe's mountain, to see what we could see. It was a good location - it was close enough to the city to not be inaccessible and it was not far enough that it felt removed. The mountain ended up being a place just to go to look over the city and maybe get some peace and quiet for a short while, before heading back down. At the top are various rose gardens and scenic spots, all making for good views of the surrounding city/countryside.

Off the mountain I was taken to Kobe's Disaster Reduction Museum to learn about the large and devastating earthquake that happened there not much more than a decade ago. It then hit home that my guides were alive and living in Kobe at that time, and while a bit of a sensative subject, to hear their own experiences of what happened was actually more valuable than wondering around the museum. Japan is prone to this kind of natural disaster though, and will probably suffer even worse in future, despite the museum's best efforts to convince and educate architects to rethink their designs. When I first came to Japan we were given huge amounts of information on the upcoming Tokai earthquake, a big one that's been overdue for a couple of years, and that some of the recent extreme weather has made people worry might not be too far away.

The museum itself was on the harbour, and we drove a bit further out onto the chains of artificial islands to get a shot of Kobe from the harbour. So I managed to get to see the city from both sides, land and sea.

The next day was a day trip to go and see Himeji Castle, probably Japan's most famous castle due to its "fairy-tale castle" kind of image. This was another big travelling checkmark for me, because I knew that in the very near future (maybe next couple of months) the entire castle will be covered in one giant tent for restoration works, and will be closed to the public for approximately 5 years. I figured I should get to see it before then at least, and very luckily that's what I got.

The castle is very well preserved, I suppose because it takes so long to service. It was designed for big and imposing-ness points, and for sheer defensibility.

I ended up wondering around it imagining myself as some invading army. I'd forgotten all my seige engines else I'd have trebuche'd my way in. And I also forget it's completely made of wood, so I left my vats of boiling oil with the babysitter. The basic formulae is you end up battering your way through a gate, being shot at from all sides from small slits in the walls with arrows and guns (yes, they had gunpowder by that time, however people don't like the idea of samurai with guns), then charging up another uphill narrow corridor only to hit another death-zone gate. If the hills don't get you the projectiles will. And all the time you can see the main castle and you keep believing you're getting closer when in fact even after getting all the way around the outer walls you're still nowhere near, and the way in can even be entirely hidden so you end up where you started. Hats off to the strategic genius.

When you finally got inside, there was still no guarantee of success. Ridiculously steep staircases topped with trapdoors, and more slits in the floor for more shooting people as they climb. And about five floors of that, with supposedly Chief Bloke sitting at the top. Goodness knows what would happen if he decided to order pizza or nip to the nearest supermarket or something, take him hours to get back in.

Coming back out of the castle was the end of the weekend and of my travels around Kobe. It was amazing that I had had the chance to look around both the castle and the city of Kobe, and in the hands of expert guides.