664 Miss Kobe, Kobe Mascot and the Band greet us as we sail into Kobe
687 Welcome to Kobe cookies. Did I mention I squished my thumb in the bathroom door during some of the rough weather. It’s growing out quite well. I didn’t think I’d lose the nail but when it was much closer to the cuticle it was iffy.
693 Moving the cooked rice out of the steamer to carry it to the cooling mats.
728 Kobe from Mount Rokko. Photoshopped in the extreme.
742 use ES2 Kobe Harbor and the Amsterdam (just to the right of the red bridge. This picture was worked over big time in Photoshop. Everything past the green trees started out a shade of pale blue due to the haze.
751 Mount Rokko Funicular
784 Taiko drummers aboard the Amsterdam.
Oct 6 – Kobe, Japan. The port here has been involved in international trade much longer than Yokohama. It was a major gateway to China long before trade was opened to the West. As we sailed in we were greeted by Miss Kobe, the Kobe Mascot and a brass band. It was great. The band was very good. There was also a crowd of people waiting on the pier. As we disembarked we were each handed a bottle of “Kobe super long lasting water” (whatever that means) and a package with two almost square cookies inside. They were crisp, like a ginger snap, but true to Japanese taste they were very mild. Might have been a ginger snap, very mild on the ginger. Certainly was the correct color.
Our first stop was at the Hakutsuru Sake Brewery Museum and Brewery. The Nada area of Kobe is known for sake. 30% of the sake produced in Japan is made here. The museum takes you through the steps in making sake. The tableaus are from the traditional way of doing it but the steps are still the same today. There is one brewery that still uses traditional methods but it’s product is expensive.
Although technically sake is rice wine for some reason the factory that produces it is called a brewery. The major steps in sake production are polishing the rice (all the bran has to be removed to give the bugs access to the glucose they eat to produce the alcohol), soaking the rice and then steaming the rice. These first three steps are just like making white rice at home. Once the rice is cooled Moto (seed mash, think sourdough starter) is added as well as Koji (rice with mold spores in it). Water is added and the mixture is reduced to a mash by pounding. It has a resting interval to allow the fermentation to start. After the interval more water, rice and Koji are mixed in and after another interval the same three ingredients are added again.
When we boarded out car it was full but as soon as the younger Japanese men saw that we had older women standing in the car they jumped up and offered their seats to them. There’s a lot Americans could learn from Japanese culture. Clean streets, no graffiti and polite behavior are just a few.
This produces cloudy sake that you can find in the market but most sake is filtered, skimmed and pasteurized before being stored for six months. After aging it is put in Yoshino cedar barrels that are wrapped in straw mats, labeled and shipped.
The museum is well laid out and with the help of an English language brochure they gave us, very easy to interpret.
From the brewery we drove up Mt. Rokko. It’s only 3,000 feet high but since it’s only located about 8 miles inland the full height is easily determined. It offered great views over Kobe although the visibility was hampered by water vapor haze. It wasn’t smog, the color was all wrong, not grey or brown enough, just pale blue. I’m pretty sure I can salvage the pictures with Photoshop. There were two view points and you could just see the ship from one of them. We rode the funicular down from the observation area. From the top of the funicular we were a lot closer to the ship and it was seen very easily. The haze was still evident but this picture has a better chance of being recovered.
The funicular cars are built to always be on a slope. The seats are level but the car is angled at about 40 degrees from horizontal. The station is a series of wide steps that you walk down until you find the seat you want. Or more correctly, a seat that’s available. There are two cars total each equipped with a space for the engineer, one at the top of the train and one at the bottom. The uphill car is enclosed with 5 doors to enter the cabin; each door serves 4 pairs of seats, two on each side of the aisle. The downhill car is open with five gates that function as the doors do on the uphill car. Since the weather is warm the open cars were a much better choice for the 1.7 km trip to the bottom of the hill. As with most funiculars most of the way there’s only one track. Right in the middle the track splits in two and that’s where the train going uphill passes the train going downhill. As you would imagine, since they drive on the left in Japan, both trains go to their respective lefts. To help reduce the power needed to run the trains they are connected by cables that run between the tracks under the train so the weight of the train going downhill helps pull the uphill train to the top. It was probably very efficient on this trip as our train was standing room only and the uphill train was almost empty.
Once at the bottom it was back on the bus for our return trip to the ship. We are docked here overnight so the Cruise Director has scheduled a Japanese Taiko drum group for the evening’s show. They were excellent.
Before the show the mayor of Kobe, the port director, the director of tourism from the prefecture and Miss Kobe presented the captain with a set of samurai armor and Miss Kobe presented bouquets of flowers to the captain, hotel manager and cruise director. The cruise director was acting as the English speaking emcee and as he walked out to get his he said over the microphone. “It’s customary to kiss the cruise director when giving him flowers.” Miss Kobe must speak some English because she laughed and blushed when she heard that. She did not, however, kills Gene.
Taiko drumming is actually very much a martial art. The movements are precisely described and half of the show in watching how the drummers move. The drum sticks for Taiko are very simple affairs. They are about one inch in diameter and about 18 inches long. They are grasped in the clenched hand and swung with great force much of the time. Although there are some soft passages in Taiko music most of it is quite emphatic. One of the men on the larger drum had his drumstick break while he was playing. It splintered just above his grip and sailed back over his head and landed about 25 feet behind him after arcing almost 20 feet in the air. He calmly reached under the drum and got another almost without missing a beat. I was hoping he’d forget the splintered piece because I was going to retrieve it. Alas, as his culture demands, when they left the stage he picked it up. They performed three songs, each about 10-15 minutes long. It was a great show and they got an appropriate standing ovation.
A very nice and energetic day. We’ve got another coming tomorrow.
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