Kobe Luminarie 神戸ルミナリエ

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After our Osaka day of museum-going and dinner of Indian food, we headed to Kobe Luminarie, a light festival that commemorates the Great Hanshin earthquake of 1995.
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We expected crowds, but were greeted by what felt like half the population of Japan. According to the Luminarie website, over 600,000 people shared our Saturday evening, and over three million passed through Luminarie in the two weeks it was open.
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This map shows the area around Sannomiya, where Luminarie is held. We exited at Motomachi station, in the upper left corner of the map and snaked through the path marked by the arrows. The actual lights of Luminarie are only in the dark red area. It took about an hour of waiting to get from the station to the lights.
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We made it! What I love about this photo is not the actual lights of Luminarie, the hand-painted bulbs donated by the Italian government that are exhibited in different designs each year, but the lights from the hundreds of cellphone cameras (look closely at the bottom of the photo).
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The main street of Luminarie. The 2008 theme was 'Infinite Light'. There was also light classical music playing along the street.
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Luminarie has a reputation as a romantic event among most people, but one of my (all-boys Tech High School) classes told me that it is bad luck to go to Luminaire on a date. Joe and I joked that the date problem stemmed from the massive crowds; this was definitely an event that required stamina, patience, and comfortable shoes. Anyway, here is the photo to prove the class wrong, a happy, if tired couple at Luminarie.
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At the entrance to the light tunnel.
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Half way through the light tunnel.
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At the end of the light tunnel (for lack of a better term) was a huge cathedral of lights. We observed from the outside, but didn't have the energy to force through the crowds to go inside. Also, the lights were set to turn off about 15 minutes after we took these photos, so we decided to go catch our train a little bit ahead of the crowds. Overall Luminarie was very beautiful, and we felt lucky to have perfect weather for it, but I think next time I will be prepared for the crush of people and try to attend on a weekday.
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