After the sandwich I headed to Sannomiya Station. I’d arranged to meet a friend who was going to show me around the Luminarie.
Light decorations at Sannomiya Station
Very Kobe.
I met up with my friend and we headed off to see the Luminarie, but the crowds were just unreal.
The queue leading to the Luminarie
We shuffled along like this, stop and go, for about an hour and a half. I thought I was going to die.. I expected some crowds, but never this many.. You can’t get to a toilet or buy anything to eat along the way, so sort all that out before you join the line.
Probably taken about halfway through..
There’s a bit of room to move now, but still a long way to go.
The Luminarie finally comes into view
Up close
The religious, almost solemn landscape of light spread out across the darkness was genuinely moving. Maybe because the event started as a memorial to the Great Hanshin earthquake, which took thousands of lives, it also has a certain gravity to it. Well.. maybe the long wait made it feel even more moving..
Heading further in..
The same decorations carry on and on. I’d been walking around this area during the day too, and I have no idea when they managed to put all this up so fast.
Coming out of the long, long tunnel, what greeted us was a castle of light. It seemed meant to evoke heaven.
Inside the castle
The castle walls
The palace inside
There’s a donation box. Everyone was tossing coins, trying to hit the bells.
Wall
Wall
Beautiful. It would’ve been even better to come on a weekday with fewer people instead of a weekend.
The donation box
With such a wonderful event being put on for free, you can’t not make a generous donation. So it can keep going next year and the year after..
That’s the end of the Luminarie, but there were food stalls and all sorts of events going on behind it, so we stopped by on the way out.