Come Away with Me

Kobe in a flash!

Leaving behind us the old charm of Kyoto, we made our way to the final destination of our Kansai tour. Unlike the previous 2 stops, this was my first visit to the port city of Kobe. Before coming, I’ve heard many good reviews from friends and colleagues, that it is a modern, attractive and very liveable city so naturally I was curious to find out what it has to offer.

Due to our spending an unexpectedly longer time in Kyoto earlier the same day,we only arrived at the city at night. As we were to take head back to Nagasaki the next evening, technically we had less than a full day to check out Kobe. I certainly hope we could make a meaningful coverage with whatever time we had left.



After a hasty breakfast at the hotel, we grabbed a couple of the town's map and set off on foot to explore the city. The first stop was to Kitano area, which was once a foreign enclaves. Nestled among this hilly and quiet area are plentiful embassies and consulates. Like Nagasaki, Kobe has been one of the country's thriving port cities, accustomed to receiving foreginers and thier cultures. The buildings in this area is significantly more western style and there is generally a different feel to it when you strolled along the narrow streets though nothing too extraordinary to shout about. Somehow we just weren't too taken in by the whole place. Perhaps it's because we've been expecting more and this part of the city resembles too much of Nagasaki. Or perhaps it's just where we came from where old colonial buildings coexist nicely with much of the local scene.



It could be due to their long drawn seclusionist policy and the largely homogenous society but somehow Japanese seem rather intrigue by anything that is slightly foreign or should i say western. Most of the foreiners' ex-dwellings or western-styled buildings are rounded up to become some exhibit of sort. Indeed the entire Kitano area is nothing more than a touristy set-up meants to squeeze as much of the traveler's dollar as possible. ￥５００ per entry to each of these houses just so to view some moldy arm-chairs by a rickety fireplace. We are talking about more than a dozen of these foreign houses here and now that is a lot of money don't you think?



More houses and western-styled buildings! At this point, I thought I'd make a small clarification. In case you are starting to think that I am all obsessed about decorating this place with faces of my boyfriend, that is not my purpose at all. We were feeling a little lazy and tired to set up the tripod now (it's after all the last day of the trip)and there wasn't many places that we felt compelled to have our pictures taken. Camera in my hand, of course he ended up being in most of the photos here. :P



The best part of being in Kobe was being surrounded by pastries, cakes and more pastries! In the sweets sense, Kobe is about as different as can be from Kyoto. Here, western confectionery rules the day. Cheesecakes and puddings are but a few of this city main omiyage exports. Which reminded me of yet another similarity Kobe has with Nagasaki where Castella (a sponge cake made from flour, egg, sugar and starch syrup), thought to be originated from Spain and brought to Japan by Portuguese merchants in the 16th century is now truly the city's speciality. In the same way, Kobe is famous throughout Japan for producing the best and most delicious bread and pastries as it was through this city where foreign ingredients such as flour and methods of baking were first introduced to the nation.

While leaving Kitano area, we chanced upon this little bakery. All it took was one peep at the glass window and we were hooked! Mind you this is only one out of the hundreds of bakeries all over this city, it wasn't that huge a selection even but yet we felt spoilt for choice. Everything looked so delicious that we had to muster our best effort to avoid sugar overload. If there was one new thing I learnt about my boyfriend during this trip, it's that I had never quite knew that he is such a danish fan.

Now check out our final selection in the basket. Some of the danishes may remind you of those at Delifrance but I tell you and Alvin can vouch that they tasted quite like something out of this world. It was as light and fluffy as a danish can be and the best thing is it wasn't as sweet as you'd expect of pastries like this.



Finally we reached the last place where we would round up our visit of this city, the Kobe Chinatown. Yet another striking resemblance to good old Nagasaki. Like any Chinatowns you find throughout the world, red is of course the predominant color, throw in a few pagoda like structures and some red lanterns and you'll have your typical Chinesey settlement.

It's just one of those little insignificant trivialities but this marked the completion of my Japan's Chinatowns 'pilgrimage' for there are a total of 3 in the country, the biggest one being in Yokohama which I had visited some 7 years ago.

With this we concluded the last leg of our tour. Kobe city is smaller than I'd expected and we were thus pleasantly surprised to be able to cover much of the city's 'must see' sights in a short span of 6 hours. It's a pleasant enough city though nothing too appealing that we might consider coming back again. Only for a taste of those wonderfully yummy pastries perhaps.

posted by テレサ @ 1:05 PM