Friday 31st July – Earthquake Museum

Kobe Earthquake Museum (made of glass..... really!!!?)

View from Museum of Rokko San the mountain I live near

Today we visited the Kobe Earthquake Museum – it was pretty thought provoking, until then I looked at it as a bit of trivia but seeing footage made me realise just how much impact it had. 6481 people died and it absolutely destroyed the whole city – trains came off lines and roads collapsed, thousands of houses were flattened, water shot up out of the grounds and mass fires broke out everywhere, all of this destruction in only 10 seconds! Most of the people who died, died of suffocation being trapped or were crushed to death. The area I live in wasn’t really hit.

They say that there is an earthquake everyday in Japan, I’m yet to experience one but there are lots of little ones apparently. The scary thing was that they said that in the next 30 years they expect another quake, this time a bigger one! The last one had it’s epicentre just off the beach in Kobe and travelled along a fault line, it measured 6.something on the Richter scale. The next big one is projected to be further out to sea where two tectonic plates meet – they anticipate one plate moving on top of another which will cause a massive quake and probably a huge Tsunami. If I’m here when it happens I pray I’m at home in Hanayama and not downtown :o(

After the museum we had lunch and a tour of downtown Kobe (called Sannomiya) – I was in a group of just me being shown around by Adam and Adrien.

View of Maccy D's from Tit's Park // Various pics of Sannomiya (Downtown)

After all that we met up and a few people with the right paperwork got mobiles then we went to the Hub, an English pub where a lot of Gaijin and Jets go. It’s funny there, they have fish and chips and serve beer in pints but it’s run by Japanese and the walls are covered in Vissel Kobe posters etc. A pint in there is 690 Yen; that’s roughly £4.60. In the restaurant we ate in, beers were about 260 Y (£1.70). For a double gin and tonic in a pint glass it’s only £1.50 – it’s werid spirits are super cheap here, a bottle of Cachaca is £9 and for a litre of Jack Daniels it’s £15 (that’s imported and expensive too!) After two or three G&T’s I was soooo tired and Andy and I headed home to ZZzzzzzzzzzzzzz.