The Unexpected

A week ago a gallerist whom I barely know gave me admission tickets to see an exhibition at a museum in Kobe.  Kobe is not exactly the next town over.  It is almost 75 km from Kyoto or an hour and a half train ride.  I decide to go.  I have no guidebook for Kobe, and I've done absolutely no research beforehand.  I have the address of the museum and that is it.  I am completely winging it.  In Kyoto and Tokyo there is something interesting around most every corner.  In Kobe...not so much.

I have to go to Uji to catch an express or long-distance train.  Obaku, my station, is a stop only for local trains.  I tell the gent in the Uji ticket office in Japanese that I would like a ticket to Kobe, to Nada Station.  He seems to understand.  The charge is ¥480.  I know something is wrong.  A train to Kobe has to be more than ¥480.  I look at the ticket.  It says Nara, not Nada.  I try to tell him.  No, not NaRa, NaDa - in Kobe.  "Hai, one-way ticket today Nara."  Ie, ie.  No Nara.  N-a-d-a.  Ko-be.  Same response.  He wants me to go to Nara.  I know Nara is about 20 minutes down the line, and Kobe is a good deal further.  I try once more.  Ko-be, Na-da Station.  He's not budging.  I'm going to Nara.  I'm going to Nara.  I take the ticket and wait on the platform for a train that will take me to someplace I do not want to go.

In Nara I purchase another ticket, this time for Kobe, but I have to transfer in Osaka.  More than two hours later I am in Kobe.  After a quick coffee in the station and a short subway ride I am at the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art.  It's a really interesting piece of architecture by Tadao Ando, concrete and glass.  The exhibition, a retrospective of Hashimoto Kansetsu's early 20th Century paintings is also good, mostly watercolors on silk scrolls and screens.

I leave the museum excited to explore Kobe.  I have high hopes for this harbor town.  Well, like San Pedro, or a lot of ports, it is pretty ugly and pretty dull.  It appears to have had a building boom in the 1980s.  There is a lot of that bad, vaguely sinister architecture like what you find in downtown Los Angeles - buildings set at odd, unfriendly angles, semi-public plazas with no public, pedestrian overpasses that keep people off the street, and underpasses that invariably lead to shopping malls.

I happen down one pedestrian zone.  The place is deserted.  It is Saturday afternoon at 2:30.  No one.  The few restaurants and shops that are open are empty.  I'm starving, but I'm not going to stop here.  I want the famous Kobe beef.  I want to eat in a lively, interesting/attractive place.  I keep walking.  I pass one ugly multi-use tower after another.  "Come on, Kobe," I plead almost aloud, "where are you?"  As my hunger grows my interest in this city declines precipitously.  I abandon my goal of finding Kobe beef or an interesting place to eat, and sit down to a very average meal at the Shin Kobe Station.

I've pretty much given up on Kobe when I see this...

Then this...

Then this...

Well, to be fair, I did have to hike up a trail and several hundred stairs to see the famous Nunobiki Falls, but...wow, yeah.  Japan keeps surprising and amazing me.