Yesterday morning, Tang and I walked around the Kobe Harborland area - if anyone has seen pictures of Kobe, you've probably seen the Harborland. There is a big ferris wheel in front of a children's museum, the Port Tower, the maritime museum and a park.
The park is an interesting place. In 1995, there was a 7.3 magnitude earthquake in Kobe that completely destroyed the road and rail systems, killed 4,000+ people and left 40,000+ people homeless. The city had a great rebuilding effort and is back to normal now, but there is a memorial in the park in Harborland to the victims of the earthquake. The most interesting part is they didn't repair that part of the park around the memorial so you can see the damage.
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| Ferris wheel at one end of Harborland |
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| Kobe Port Tower and the Maritime Museum (the white "sails") |
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| Selfie! |
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| The Great Hanshin Earthquake Memorial - unrepaired to show scope of damage |
In the afternoon, we went to Osaka Castle as part of an organized excursion by the conference. Osaka Castle is beautiful! It was built by Toyotimo Hideyoshi, a great samuri and one of the unifiers of Japan in the 17th century. He built a canal system in Osaka to move goods and for defense purposes, and he built a huge wall around the castle. The wall was built with giant stones, some brought from several hundred miles away. They had to be moved on wooden log rollers while being pushed by teams of men.
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| Wall around Osaka Castle |
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| Osaka Castle |
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| Osaka Castle |
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| View of Osaka from top of Osaka Castle |
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| Green tea ice cream! |
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| Shin-SaiBashi Street in Osaka. Tons of shops and super busy. |
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| Ads on Shin-SaiBashi |
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| Takoyaki! Yummy Osaka street food - basically batter and fried octopus balls. Served with teryaki, Japanese mayo and bonito flakes. |
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