Last weekend, I went to Kobe to see the Luminarie, a light festival held every December to commemorate the Great Hanshin earthquake, the devastating earthquake that leveled Kobe in 1995. This year’s Luminarie was held from December 3 to 14.

Before the Luminarie began for the night, I explored Kobe a little by foot. It was only my second time in Kobe—the first time was for an errand-type trip for groceries from Kobe’s Chinatown and household goods from Kobe’s Ikea (which, incidentally, is exactly like every other Ikea I’ve visited in the US, down to the layout and meatball sauce—it’s strangely comforting, as if stepping through the doors of Kobe’s Ikea beams you into the Ikea of Anywhere, California).

Kobe is an attractive, walkable port city with mountains on one side and the Inland Sea on the other. It reminds me of San Francisco—something about the grayish shade of light there, its closeness to the water, and the grayness and newness of the buildings (compared to the rest of Japan, which, for the most part, is freaking old).

As I mentioned, there’s even a Chinatown, Nankin-machi, which is one of only about three Chinatowns in Japan (there is also one in Nagasaki, and the biggest one is in Yokohama).

Before the light festival, I walked through Chinatown to Meriken Park, which is on the harbor. It includes Kobe Port Tower, the Kobe Maritime Museum, and a memorial to the Great Hanshin earthquake victims.

I also visited Harborland, which is a shopping and amusement park area, with a picturesque shopping complex called Mosaic. Mosaic has a small park called Mosaic Garden, which overlooks a ferris wheel and amusement park below.

In Mosaic Garden, there is also a special gazebo for the holidays called, “Shakehands.” You step inside the gazebo with that special someone, each put one hand on a metal grip in the middle of the gazebo, and then you use your free hand to shake hands with the other person. When you shake hands, voila! The gazebo lights up blue. What better way to display your affection during the holiday season than by shaking hands?

Trivia: In America, Christmas is a time for families to gather, while New Year’s Eve is for couples. In Japan, New Year’s Eve is when you spend quality time with the family. Christmas is for a different sort of quality time.

And one of my favorite parts of my visit to Mosaic? Snow! Fake snow, that is. At five o’clock, frenetic Christmas music started to play in the mall and fake snow blew overhead. Another one of those sneaky, delightful surprises I often encounter these days.

After I visited Mosaic, it was dusk, and I walked over to the Marutamachi area, where the walking route to the light festival began. The crowds were incredible. It was the last Saturday of the festival, and there were literally thousands of people lined up in the streets, as if it were a New Year’s Eve party.

The city had blocked off several streets for crowd control, and there was a carefully mapped route that the crowds followed to get to the actual streets where the light displays were. It took at least an hour-and-a-half to walk from the start of the route to the light displays, which were really only a few blocks away, near Sannomiya station. It was an orderly crowd, though (yay, Japan!), of mostly couples and families.

The actual light display begins with an arcade of lights that arch over a few blocks of streets. The lights are colorful and gaudy. The Italian government donated the lights, which are each individually hand-painted. Unfortunately, my camera doesn’t do too well with nighttime shots, but you get the general picture (no pun intended).

After walking through the arcade, you walk up into a small park that has a grand, ornate circular set-up of lights that resembles an oversized gazebo of lights.

It was pretty, and yet it also reminded me of a cross between Caesar’s Palace and It’s a Small World—as if the inside of a casino had been transported to downtown Kobe. I prefer something a little more subtle. The onlookers were all delighted by the lights, though, and took plenty of pictures (like me!).

As with any good festival in Japan, one of the best parts of the festival was the street food. There were multiple blocks of food stands, with okonomiyaki (a sort of Japanese “pancake”), taiyaki (a fish-shaped waffle stuffed with red bean paste or chocolate), takoyaki (fried balls of dough with octopus meat inside), and much more.

I had some karaage (deep fried chicken) and these adorable little egg waffles that I didn’t know the name of—no pictures of them this time, though! I was too busy stuffing my face.

As I head off on my holiday travels, I wish you and yours a very happy holiday season, and the best New Year’s yet.

Leaf-peeping season in Japan is, sadly, over. I thought this would be a good time to post some more pictures I took during my leaf-peeping outings that, for one reason or another, were not up to my (admittedly perfectionistic) standards, and so didn’t go into my original posts.

In addition to visiting Takao, Ishiyama-dera, and Arashiyama, I also visited the Hiyoshi Taisha shrine for leaf-peeping.

Hiyoshi Taisha is at the base of Mt. Hiei, north of Kyoto. Unfortunately, the day that I visited, it was raining and bitterly cold, and my photos ended up being all invariably blurry--which makes for interesting moody-type pictures, but not much clarity. Some of them still struck me, though, so here they are.

In spite of the rain and cold that day, the red maple leaf colors were still stunning. Some of the falling red leaves even ended up sticking to the top of my umbrella--I could see their leafy silhouettes from the underside of the umbrella--which I like to think is a lucky sign.

Below: Pictures from Hiyoshi Taisha, Ishiyama-dera, and the bamboo forest in Arashiyama.

I recently visited a monkey park for the first time, in the Arashiyama district of western Kyoto. Japan is, apparently, just brimming full of wild monkeys—I have heard many stories about the run-ins that different English teachers have had with monkeys in the mountains or forests, in the countryside, and even (or especially) in an outhouse.

The monkeys at Iwatayama Monkey Park are all wild and freely roam the park, which is on Mount Arashiyama, near the Togetsukyo Bridge (which is famous, incidentally, for its view of the nearby mountains in leaf-peeping season).

The walk up Mount Arashiyama is somewhat steep, with tall trees lining both sides of the trail. Along the way, before you have actually seen any monkeys, are ominous-looking signs, warning you not to show the monkeys any food, give them any food, or look them in the eye (direct eye contact can be seen by the monkeys as a sign of aggression—they’re very sensitive, just like you and I).

Eventually, you get to a bend in the road and take a smaller path up towards an overlook point, which is where the majority of the monkeys are. On the overlook point, which also offers a generous view of Kyoto, the monkeys freely frolic (pardon the alliteration), and caretakers keep the more aggressive monkeys in line with the help of a broom (I don't think PETA would like this very much). You can also go into a small cabin to feed the monkeys (the humans go inside and feed the monkeys outside, through wire-fence windows).

The monkeys are what I expected monkeys to be like: red-faced, red-bottomed, flea-picking, aggressive. Your typical monkey. The ones at Iwatayama are Japanese macaque monkeys. None of them bothered me, but I did see one baring its teeth at an innocent-looking gentleman who just happened to walk by it.

The most interesting monkey I saw was a younger one, a baby, who kept scraping a small rock against a bigger rock. I’m not sure what it was trying to do—make music? Discover fire? Make a weapon?

My most favorite pictures from my visit were of the expressions on the faces of monkeys who were being groomed by their partners. They looked as blissful as I must look when I step into the soaking tub at an onsen.

Shortly after visiting the monkey park, I lunched at one of the best udon places I’ve visited yet in Japan, called Ozuru.

Ozuru is an udon restaurant located on the main street of Arashiyama, close to Tenryu-ji temple and the Bamboo Forest. This was my second visit to Ozuru. Their specialty is tempura udon, which can be ordered a la carte or in a set meal. You can also order the cold tempura udon (i.e. the noodles do not come in a broth) or hot tempura udon (udon with hot broth). I ordered the hot tempura udon set.

Their tempura, especially the shrimp tempura, is the best I have had. Anywhere. The shrimp tempura is huge—really, I don't know where they're getting their shrimp. The tempura batter is so crisp that, when you bite into it, you and the person next to you can both hear the sound of the crunch. This is not an exaggeration.

The shrimp on the inside is tender and fresh, and the batter is so light it makes me want to cry. And the actual udon, oh the udon, has that rare springy quality when you bite into it that is the hallmark of the best kind of noodle. In Cantonese, we call that dahn ngah—which translates into “bounces off your teeth." This means the noodle is so elastic that it slides and bounces off your teeth, as opposed to being a floury mess when you bite into it.

And did I mention that the flavored rice—flavored with shitake mushrooms, pork, and assorted grains--that came with my tempura set was also aromatic and delicious? Perfect for a cold autumn day? I soon forgot about the monkeys.