We had a leisurely morning since we didn't arrive in Kobe until noon. I attended the lecture this morning by Dr. T. J. Pempel on how Kyoto avoided the atomic bomb. It was on the list of targets up until just a few weeks before the bombing in August 1945. It was removed from the list due to the Secretary of War's fondness for the city and area since he had honeymooned there many years ago. Kobe is the port city for Osaka and Kyoto. One thing that struck me from the lecture is that the kamikaze pilots were on one-way missions because Japan was having real trouble getting fuel supplies so they only had enough fuel for one trip to the target, and not for the return.
Our tour today was called Panoramic Osaka and we were on the same bus as Steve and Leona. We left around 1:15 and spent the first 50 minutes driving into Osaka along their elevated freeway. It's 2 lanes in either direction with walls along either side. It makes sense that they don't want cars flying down into the road if there's an accident, but it makes for a rather boring (and Steve thought claustrophobic) ride. Our guide was soft spoken and her English was not great and since she didn't always utilize the microphone in the best way, we could only get some of what she was saying. She seemed to be reading from a script with facts about the area. Our first stop was the Umeda Sky Building, which is an office complex with an interesting span between towers which is open to visitors for great views of the area. It's up on the 39th floor, so you take elevators and then an open escalator that connects the two towers. The weather wasn't the best, rainy and cloudy, but we were still able to see a lot.
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| A staircase near our suite |
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| The Sky Building |
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| Views from the top |
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| This hotel caught my eye |
Our guide must have lost visitors in the past, because she would count and recount us constantly. On the bus she passed around her phone number for us to take a photo of in case of emergency, which is a very smart thing to do and I wish all guides would do that. Next stop was to the Osaka Castle where the Shoguns lived before the power was given back to the Emperors (think I have that right). Again, we had to park down in the huge bus parking lot and walk about 15 minutes through the rain to see the castle. The cherry blossoms are coming into full bloom, which is beautiful.
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| We had 30 minutes here which wasn't enough time to go inside. |
There's a museum here as well, and we just had time to sort of check out the shops on the ground floor. There were souvenir shops and cafes, including a Tully's Coffee Shop!
The rain had lightened up so the walk back to the bus wasn't as uncomfortable. Then we had the 45-minute ride back to Kobe Port. We got back around 5:30, got cleaned up, and went up to Observation for a drink. Our waiter there was I Katut, from Bali, who was our junior wine steward very often in Compass Rose on the Grand Arctic cruise in summer 2022. He is just delightful and he remembered us and who we usually had dinner with on that trip (Patrick and Lois). And he remembered that they had done this same cruise last year! He has a wicked sense of humor and if you tease him, he comes right back with something clever. So nice to see him again.
Then we met Jan/Tom and Sarah for dinner in Compass Rose. Our table was tucked into a little sort of alcove which was lovely and relatively quiet in the large dining room. It gave us a great view of the always hard-working staff. I would have liked to go to the show (a local group of Japanese drummers), but I was just beat and so headed back to the cabin. Michael was asleep before his head hit the pillow, and I worked on this for a while, but could only do a paragraph or so before I gave up. It's now 7 am Thursday morning so I'll close and get ready for our morning tour. It doesn't look like rain today, which is good news.
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