Japan in the Springtime
As readers of this blog may know, I visited the Kansai region of Japan from April 6th to the 9th. This was 
the second time I have been to the area in Spring, following my 2006 visit with my good friend, Lindsey. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Japanese geography, the Kansai region of Japan (also called the Kinki region, which always raises a smile on my face!) is west of Tokyo, and it covers the cities of Nara, Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe, to name just a few. It is a beautiful part of Japan and is well worth a visit if you ever make the trip to The Land of the Rising Sun, especially in the springtime when the cherry blossoms are out. On this trip, I was scheduled to spend my first night and morning in Osaka, before going to Kyoto for an afternoon and evening, and then heading to Kobe on the Sunday. The plan changed slightly though as it rained all day on Saturday, which made the Kyoto trip much less than enjoyable. I was wanting to walk around the city and parks and see the sakura in full bloom, but it’s not that nice to do when rain is constantly coming down.
Saturday morning was spent wandering around Osaka, and especially Amerika Mura - the American Village, where all the cool and crazy-dressed kids go to parade around in their fashions. It’s like a mini-Harajuku , but this one caters more for the host/hostess look, and the goth/lolita fashion. I’ve just scoured the net for photos of the former category, but can’t for the life of me find any, and I can’t remember the Japanese name of them. Just think guys in wide-collared, open shirted suits, with impeccably styled hair (akin to Ziggy Stardust in hair style), jewellery, and girls with big hair, also impeccably styled and dyed light brown. Once I can find some photos of this type I will be sure to post them. They are frequently sighted all over Dotonbori Dori in central Osaka. As for the 2nd type, have a look at the photo below (This Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons image is from the user Chris 73 and is freely available at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Gothic_lolita_takeshita_street.jpg under the creative commons cc-by-sa 2.5 license). You can see the girl on the left is in lolita fashion (usually all-white or pink, with styles and materials reminiscent of the Victorian period… a very young image is desired, hence the teddy bear she is carrying), and the girl on the right has a goth look (dressed in all black, sometimes with a Victorian style and with dark makeup around the eyes, sometimes combined with whitened faces).
As you all know, I love all aspects of modern Japanese culture and the fashions here fascinate me. So I wandered around and people-watched for a little while, browsing the shops and wondering what goes through the minds of people when they buy some of this stuff. Saturday afternoon was spent in Kyoto, but as I said earlier, the rain was teeming down and it wasn’t too pleasant to be looking at the cherry blossoms. That was a real shame as they were in full bloom and even a cloudy day would have been great to get some good photos. Ah well, maybe next year.
But I woke up early on Sunday morning to see blue skies and no clouds, which boded very well for my trip to Kobe. And it got even better when my good friend, Candy, made a surprise trip down from Tokyo to meet me in Osaka and then travel on to Kobe with me for the day. Kobe has the look of a relatively young city, and indeed a lot of it had to be completely rebuilt after the 1995 earthquake. But there is obviously a lot of money in that city, which was illustrated when I walked past a petrol station to see a brand new red Ferrari filling up. Don’t think I’ve ever seen a Ferrari here in Okinawa; the closest I’ve probably seen in the line of luxury sports cars would be a couple of Porsches. In the morning we walked over to the Hanshin Earthquake Memorial Park, which is near the harbour in Kobe. It was very sobering to see the names of over 6,000 people who had died in the carnage of the earthquake - an event which lasted only 20 seconds on January 17th, 1995 at 5:46:46 am, but which caused around 10 trillion yen’s worth of damage (2.5% of Japan’s GDP at the time, according to Wikipedia). This past weekend, in the early hours of Saturday morning, I was listening to a Wigan rugby league game online when I felt an earthquake in Okinawa. It was a medium strength one (nothing falling off shelves or like you see on TV) but lasted for a good 15 seconds. It really is only a matter of time before a big earthquake hits mainland Japan again. Apparently, Tokyo is due a big earthquake in the next 10-15 years. I am not too sure how you determine when an area is “due” an earthquake, but I’ll leave that to the geologists.
After paying our respects at the earthquake monument, we headed on the Kobe Ropeway (2-4 person 
cablecars) up to the Nunobiki-Herb Garden. This is a beautiful set of gardens on a hillside looking down on Kobe, and offered some spectacular views of the city. The bright weather just heightened the enjoyment of it all. As you can see in the photos, it’s a wonderful place to view nature. The only downside was that it was only April and many of the flowers were not in bloom yet. The lavender garden sign showed spectacular gardens of purple & blue; the reality showed a bunch of grey/brown bushes with no leaves or flowers on them whatsoever! Ah well, it was nice just to be out of the city and somewhere you can’t hear the traffic.
When you’re in Kobe, there is only one thing to eat for lunch, and that is Kobe beef. Not cheap by any means, but well worth it and famed to be some of the best beef in the world. My choice of restaurant was called Regna Tri, and was in central Kobe. I opted for a “special sirloin” lunch set, while Candy went for the standard fillet. She told me she thought it might just be the same beef but just priced differently. She was very wrong! After having entrees cooked in front of us, the beef came along with some vegetables, rice, soup etc. The taste was exquisite and easily the best beef I have eaten. You hardly had to chew it - it was so tender that it just seemed to dissolve in your mouth. Candy tried some of mine and was really surprised at how different it tasted compared to hers. Y5,000 (about 25 quid) was the total cost of the lunch set, but it was well worth it. If you ever travel to Japan and Kobe, you must try this delicious meat for yourselves. You won’t be disappointed.
The afternoon and evening of Sunday were spent in the harbour area of Kobe. There is lots to do down at the port, with boat trips going out into the harbour (very popular during the 
evening when everything is lit up), an amusement park, seating areas and lots of shops and restaurants. We went down the harbour for a while to sit and talk. While we were there we noticed a couple of young girls; one of them in very formal kimono and the other in a ball gown with flowers in her hand. Both girls had a guy putting them into poses and taking photos of them. I asked Candy if she thought they might be models, or going to a wedding or similar. Her reply surprised me quite a bit. She said they were probably just university students making some extra money. Apparently this is done quite a lot in Japan. Girls will dress up in a certain way, and then find a guy (usually through the internet) who will take photos of them and pay them for the privilege of having photos taken of them. The guys are a subgroup of the otaku (geeks/nerds in Japanese society), and will spend a lot of money taking photos of these girls. There’s no eroticism in the photos themselves (at least not in the public ones) and the girls are all fully clothed and covered when the photos are taken. Japan continues to find new ways to surprise me, and I had no idea that this kind of thing was occurring, and helping to fund girls’ ways through university.
In the evening, we stayed around the harbour for dinner before heading to a hotel Candy had found online the night before. In Japan, this style of hotel is known as a business hotel, and its main clientele are businessmen who have missed the last train home or who have an early morning meeting. The rooms are cheap but relatively small. It was all we needed though as I would be leaving to go to Kobe airport at 6am the next morning. It took a joint effort to find the place though, and we had to use our mobile phone’s GPS program to find it. That is a great tool - the GPS system on the phones can be used to give you directions and will constantly update as you walk/drive to your destination. The in-car facility is just like using a satellite navigation tool and is great if you understand enough Japanese to use the system. I fumble around it from time to time but can tell it’s pretty powerful.
And then at 6:30am on a sunny Monday morning, I was on a plane back to Okinawa and was heading back to work. Despite Saturday being (quite literally) a washout, it was an enjoyable trip. My next trip back to the mainland will be at the end of May, when I’ll head up to Tokyo again to meet up with Candy. Thank you for your patience in waiting for this entry - it’s been in my queue to be posted for about a week but blog server issues have stopped me posting it.
Take care and I’ll be in touch again soon.
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Nice to hear a bit more about your trip Dave, and see a few extra pics.
Bim xx
Hi Dave,
Good to see your blog problems have been sorted and to see yet another aspect of Japan.