The Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake (Hanshi-Awaji Daishinsai)

I mentioned earlier about the great Earthquake that struck Kobe in 1995 - so a little more on that.

First, it is odd to find that 15 years after the quake, there are still signs of its damage in the neighborhood - below is a picture of one house that still remains untouched since the quake hit.






The quake was a magnitude 6.8 on the MMS (the 70's revision to the Richter Scale) and 7.3 based on the JMA Scale (Japan Meterological Scale). All that is to say it was a big one - the biggest in Japan since Tokyo was turned into charcoal in 1923 with the Great Kanto Earthquake. The quake struck at 5:46 AM on January 17th, 1995. The earthquake and ensuing fires left over 6,000 dead, 45,000 injured, and crippled the city's infrastructure, toppling rail lines, elevated highways, and cutting the bridge that connected Rokko Island from the mainland.

This image is from an area called Sannomiya which is the heart of the city.



A number of supposedly strong buildings toppled and pancaked in spectacular fashion such as..

the Kashiwai Building just before completely toppling into the road...


(And after...)


An view of the collapsed Hanshin Expressway can be seen here (opens in a new window)



It would be hard to underestimate the effect of this disaster on the country as whole - It undermined people's faith in the government; response to the disaster was slow, and the earthquake-proofing technologies in place proved inadequate. The total damage was 2.5% of GDP for that year, likely prolonging the effects of the recession the country was already experiencing, and it was also the end of Kobe's roll as the premiere port in Japan.
The response to the disaster has been credited with bringing about the birth of volunteerism in Japan.

Japan has always had a "uchi" and "soto" mentality (inside and outside) - if you are "inside" a certain circle, its members will go to no end to help you. But if you are "outside" a group - you are pretty screwed.

However, in the wake of the government's non-response, people from all over Japan poured in to help in rescue and clean-up efforts. Private companies with national distribution networks (read: convenience stores) stepped up to get supplies to the affected areas, and the Yakuza (Japanese Mafia, which has its largest operations in Kobe) was even seen passing out food and blankets. Since then volunteer work has become a mainstay of the culture.

A family with whom I am good friends lost a daughter in the quake and they come to the memorial in Sannomiya every year on 1.17

It's a lovely memorial, built underground and away from the noise of the city above. I will post some pictures soon if possible.

One bright spot was that to lift the city's spirits following the disaster, Kobe began a festival of lights every winter known as "Luminarie"

Words (or at least my words) can't quite describe the dazzling event, so I will just have to snap some shots next winter.

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.

The Neighborhood (kinjyo)

So, now that we have seen a map, the house (external) and the excuses for taking so long to get this all started, let's explore the neighborhood (or kinjyo −近所 )

As I mentioned earlier, the area we live in is called Rokko, which is the name of the two local train stations (more on Japanese trains in a future post)
The actual neighborhood is called Yahata-cho (八幡町)

A quick aside on addresses in Japan:

Japan is divided into 47 prefectures (usually suffixed ken −県, but Osaka and Kyoto are both fu　−府, and Tokyo is to −都. In the case of Hokkaido, the northernmost island, the do −道is the suffix, thus the whole thing is called the To-do-fu-ken system - are you still with me?). These are further divided into cities (shi −市), or counties (gun −郡)
Most larger cities are further cut into wards (ku −区) and the wards are divided into smaller named areas.
The counties are simply cut into towns (chou −町) and after the town level, you have the aforementioned smaller named areas.

Once you have these smaller named areas (let's call them neighborhoods) you would think that you just name your street and address number, but the Japanese have a quirky (read infuriating) reluctance to name streets (except for truly massive avenues or numbered highways). Instead the neighborhoods are divided into sections (chou-me −丁目) which are divided into numbers (ban −番) and then a third number (gou −号) identifying each house. The trouble comes from the fact that the numbers are rather haphazard. 10 could be next to 3, and 4 could be next to 7, and the last number often seems pulled out of thin air (at one school I work, the school occupies an entire ban, but its third number is 57. (there is no 1-56...just a nice seemingly random 57)

so that wasn't quick at all - my apologies

moving on

In Yahata-cho, and in fact, all over Kobe, and for that matter, all over Japan, space is at a premium. The end result is that buildings are built basically wherever the space can be found. This means that you can have a street that goes School, steelworks, hospital, house, liquor shop, house, massive apartment, tiny house, fish market, rice paddy, porn shop (I exaggerate, but not by much)

here is a nice photo of a nearby street leading to one of the train stations:



Now, don't think I'm judging here - you gotta work with what you got, and on the whole the Japanese show a remarkable ability to get the most out of the little space they have. Remember that Japan is about the size of California, but is almost 90% insanely steep mountains and the population is about 136,000,000 (it's like putting 40% of the US population into 10% of California - and from the 10% you need to also grow most of the food as well as find a place for everyone to live) so space is at an absolute premium. It also means that a large city like Kobe (1.5 million inhabitants) is packed right up against the mountains so that you get scenes like this (looking north from the in-law's house):



This was taken in early March - the snow has long gone.

So as always - Japan is a land of contrasts. Old and new, dazzlingly ingenious and confoundingly backwards, quick to adapt some things and heel-draggingly slow to change in other areas.

The contradictions are easily my favorite part about this place.

More images below:


The local National Rail station (Rokko-michi)





A small street of bars and restaurants a stone's throw from Osaka Station (note the elevated highway looming in the background)



Akashi Castle taken from the platform of Akashi Station (this is where I went to fail my driving test - more on that in a future post)