Kobe as seen from the mountains

A view of Kobe from the mountains behind. This is not taken from the absolute peak, rather from about half-way up the side. As you can clearly see, Kobe is a port city, though it lost much of its business to Osaka following the Great Awaji-Hanshin Earthquake of 1995 which left 5,000 dead and devastated much of the city. However, 15 years after the fact, the city has recovered (though the port has never fully recovered the lost business.)

Pertinent to my previous post about sticking things wherever there is space, note the large pale-green balls on the left edge - clearly a set of natural gas tanks crammed among apartments.

NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) is a concept that has little following here.

On a side note, Japan has many famous things in sets of threes. One set is the three great views of Japan. One of those views is the view of Kobe from the peak of Mount Rokko - a picture will follow as soon as the father-in-law inevitably drags my ass on a hike to the top sometime this year, but you are getting the essence of it here.