Kobe (神戸市)

Today's adventures take us to Kobe, the place famous for its beef. So let's let us get that out of the way first. I'm not a beef connoisseur, and after they put A$30 next to a picture of the most boring burger I've seen on a menu, I decided it would have been wasted on me. I'm sure there's another blog out there somewhere that's much more enthusiastic.

What was new in Kobe since my last visit was a Aquarium / Art exhibit. Curious how the two could be combined I took a look for $26. And ... well, it was an interesting idea.

But unfortunately it felt like it was a little over ambitious. Mostly because a lot of the enclosures actually felt like they were making the poor little fish live in the same shoe boxes sized accommodation that their human counter parts have to make do with. That said, things were certainly colorful.

The free roaming turtles were a little ... odd. One appeared to be trying to smooch itself harder into a wall. While the other one had the carer try to make the food in the bowl look more enticing by ensuring there was always a piece of lettuce on top.

They definitely had me with the space bubble again though.

Kobe also has a cable car (multiple in fact) so I had some hope of being able to enjoy the sunset from up on a hill and walk back down. Which ... then got a lot more complicated by the fact that the path down also appeared to have closing hours. At least, parts of it? The language barrier was real here. So I kind of just decided that if I walk in such a way that there are people around me, I can't be in too much trouble yet.

About halfway down the park seemed to stop and I found myself ... on a narrow mountain road. Road being an operative word in that sentence. And the only walking path I was able to find was ... very overgrown looking. Which, even though there was still light, was a little too much "brushing up with nature and whatever animals it might bring" for me.

So I walked along the road until I actually found a walking path about 6 metres below me, with lights, and nice and wide. Took me a while to find a point where I could actually get down to that.

This finally gave me the opportunity to enjoy the sunset (what I wanted to do from the top of the hill the entire time till I discovered that I was going to get kicked out). But ... well, the view from my lookout in Kyoto was still nicer. Less mosquitos. And far more open than the little window to Kobe I managed to find. But when I finally went down the rest of the way, I have to admit that this is the first time I've seen a waterfall that actually had floodlights for night viewing.

With Kobe being so close to Osaka, I did not make any fancy plans for getting home but rather just expected to take whatever train was available, when I got around to it. Imagine my surprise when I discovered the entire board to be covered in "delayed" symbols. That's like ... twice I've been here with delayed trains. This time it was an accident with a human though, which is more forgivable than the maintenance which ran over time last time.