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MeznG. In the air, on the road, river or sea again
We woke this morning as the ship was negotiating the busy waterways leading into the port City of Kobe. From the Lido deck ( deck 14) we watched the approach. On the dock was a young lady dressed in a very neat pale blue suit complete with white gloves and straw hat waving at the ship. After a number of minutes of continual waving, she disappeared inside the terminal but then emerged a short time late with a 17 piece brass band! They set up very quickly and immediately started playing, It was hard to stop your self from falling into 2 lines and marching around the deck! It was a great welcome and quite unique. I can't quite get the gist of all the bowing. What's the etiquette here. Who bows first, who bows to who and is it, as Glenn says, a competition to see who can be the last to bow.! It will get the better of me and I will have to ask but I need to ask the right person in order not to offend. Today we are in Kobe and will be docked overnight. Kobe is the sixth largest city in Japan and is on the southern side of the main island of Honshu. There are day trips to Kyoto and Osaka but we have opted for a half day tour up to Rokkosan-Saikoho garden terrace for a view of Kobe and surrounds and a tour of the Kobe Sake Brewery Museum. Our guide's nickname is Sake which is appropriate for today. On the drive up the mountain Sake talks a bit about the religion in Japan. Majority of Japanese, particularly the older generations embrace both Buddhism and the ancient Shinto religion. Buddhism deals with the past and Shinto, the present and future. She went on to explain the differences in the worship and the times they use both. She certainly made it very interesting and at times humorous like she said that on about December 24th they all become Christian so to reap the benefits of the Christmas spirit and the children get gifts from Santa Claus. A few days later and they are celebrating New year Shinto style with lots of Sake and family feasting. She indicated that the younger generations have moved away from religion, however at significant times of the year, they will return to the shrine or the temple. At the top of the mountain we have a spectacular view of the city of Kobe and surrounds. Once again though all of the signage and information is only In Japanese so we are flying blind as to what we are looking at but it's impressive. Morning coffee today comes from a vending machine, is dispensed in a ring pull can and is cold. Refrigerated black coffee, not sure we are going to embrace the idea when we go home but desperate times call for desperate measures and to be fair it had a better coffee taste and strength than what we get on the ship, it's just that it's cold! Back on the bus and Sake shares some stories from her childhood and the changes that she has seen. I would guess she maybe in her late 50's or early 60's. In 1995 Kobe was devastated by an earthquake which destroyed the port area and travel infrastructure and over 40000 lives were lost. Sake lives in an 15 story apartment on the 14th floor and while her actual apartment was not damaged, the people on the top floor had all their windows smashed and the essential services of gas, electricity and most importantly water were cut. In recent times Japan have introduced flushing toilets, but no water means no flush! She resorted to going to a local school and taking buckets of water back to be able to flush. Our next stop was the Sake brewery museum where we watched a short video about the ancient process of making and brewing the sake and then we went on a self guided tour of the old brewery. No English here so we had to figure it all out for ourselves. It's very well depicted but you definitely need to be Japanese to know what you are looking at. Let's just put this out there because I fear I am starting sound repetitive , unless indicated otherwise everything we look at is only described in Japanese! After the brewery and Sake tasting, oh yes at the end of the tour we did get to taste about 6 different types of sake....why else would we do the tour? It's an acquired taste but ok. Back on the ship for lunch and regroup before heading into the city precinct on the shuttle bus provided by the cruise line. We get dropped at the entrance to the Motomachi shopping street. It's a covered pedestrian street that stretches for at least 2 km and includes retail shops, fresh food and restaurants, cafes and street food vendors. About 500 metres after we emerge from the shopping street we come to the Minatogawa Jinja (shrine). There are an enormous number of Shrines in Japan, but as this is our first we are quite intrigued. To add to the interest a couple of people came to worship or pray while we are there so we witnessed the practice that Sake had described to us during our morning tour. That's was pretty awesome. From here we head to the harbour and Meriken Park to the Kobe Port Tower and further along to the Kobe Earthquake Memorial Park. This is an interesting spot as there is a narrated account of the earthquake and extent of the damage and the subsequent repair work. There is still at this site a portion of the pier that fell away into the ocean, just a small example of the damage. Glenn is determined to find the Kobe City Museum so we are trekking up and down back and forth. Time to take a break and stop for.....you guessed it coffee and cake! It's hot and humid but determined to find this place we hit the streets again but to no avail. Eventually we throw in the towel and head back to the shuttle. Guess what we drive past on the way back to the ship, totally in the opposite direction to where we had been going! No doubt, the map was wrong! Back on board we go for a swim to cool off, then a bath to refresh and head out for the evening activities on board. Even though we are staying in port overnight we opt to take in the view from the deck. Have a nice dinner with some more interesting people from China, USA and Japan. We take in the movie (or most of it) on the big screen under the stars. A nice end to a busy but good day. .
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