Luminaria

The draw to Kobe during the Christmas season is the Luminaria; a street lit with Christmas lights in commemoration of the victims of the 1995 earthquake. We have never seen such a crowd. Even at the train stations, people jostled about on the way to Kobe. The cars were packed. In one car, I counted about 140 people, but that was several weeks ago on a ride home from Kyoto. The cars to Kobe had a few more people packed in, but I didn’t try to count.

We met with our JET friends, Jill and Sean at the Sannomiya station and walked through underground Kobe to the start of the Luminaria walk. Underground is warmer and mirrors much of the life above on street level. The basements of the major department stores are linked under the streets with a sidewalk to the subway system. The underground walks are lined with even more stores and restaurants. Just like up above.

Once we emerged from the depths of Kobe’s underground, we were herded with many other people back toward Motomachi station. Soon, the few people we were walking with merged with more and more crowds. As we gathered on Motomachi Dori, a major shopping street, we came to a halt. For the length of the street we were packed together. Our walk slowed as it wound and zigzagged from Motomachi to the old foreign settlement, probably close to three miles. For the majority of the procession we were shoulder-to-shoulder and front to back with tens of thousands of people. Security lined the sides of the street and guided us through the fenced off streets to the final attraction.

The Luminaria is a series of lighted arches along a five-block stretch. Once we rounded the last corner and got within 300 meters of the Luminaria, the crowd virtually stopped. Many people snapped photos with their cell phones as we shuffled toward the display. In the crowd, people pushed and jostled for the last stretch. (Think Rock concert with old school festival seating!) Every once in a while,the crowd would part enough to snap pictures of the ones we were with, but there really wasn’t a break in the crowd for miles.

The Luminaria, as advertised, shut down at 10:00 pm. We were nearly to the end of the five-block stretch of lights, when the final song cued the chime of a bell and signaled the lights to be turned off. It was something that we expected, but didn’t. The crowd of people still stretched for miles behind us. Every corner we turned we could still see the thousands of people shuffling through the chilly streets. We asked and joked about them turning the lights off on our approach, but didn’t really think that they would deny that many people the opportunity to see the seasonal lights.

We missed a lit pavilion at the end of the walk, but the crowd didn’t subside until we got back on the train for home. One train left and another came immediately following, a special train just for the crowds. Chrissy and I were lucky enough to be one of the first few on the new train and were able to sit and rest. We had spent two and a half hours walking over four miles through Kobe. We were tired and still had a cold ride back from the station once we got back to Kitaguchi.