Robot Claw

We’re in Kobe now, after a short multi-train journey from Arima early today. We have a nice hotel room right in the main shopping district and here’s the view as I write this:

Kobe’s one of the biggest cities in Japan and known for its beef (amongst other things) but first on our list is to visit a location I daresay most foreign tourists haven’t ever heard of. I’ll let you wait until tomorrow to hear about it.

There’s a mall across the street from our hotel and the 2nd and 3rd floors are an otaku’s paradise with all manner of game/anime/figure/card shops. I’ve already bought some stuff but will certainly spent more time there these next few days.

That’s KLS eating a chocolate taiyaki from a shop near the station (show in the background). She said it was really good, like a crispy pancake with chocolate inside.

I didn’t take many photos today – I was overwhelmed by the otaku mall – so to end this post here’s a specific story about a gacha experience. It starts with this machine:

If you translate the Japanese it says something about the machine containing photos of “someone else’s dog” and to collect all 15. It was ¥300 (about $2) a go and with the intention of giving whatever it was to Sue I threw my coins in and turned the knob and this came out:

A small ball with an even smaller… photo inside. “Surely this isn’t it“, I thought, “surely it’s a sticker“.

It isn’t. It’s what appears to be a handmade and hand cut tiny photo of a dog. Again: it’s not a sticker, just a slightly poorly printed photo. It’s exactly as described: I paid $2 for a tiny photo of someone else’s dog!

I was tempted to just toss it away, but I bought it for Sue and by golly it’s going to Sue. I hope she likes it 🙂

Anime tourism has been a thing in Japan for decades now, and historically took the form of people visiting spots that had been featured in anime series. The tourist industry took note, and soon enough anime started to deliberately include certain locations, and eventually towns and districts even began funding their own anime for tourist reasons.

After Fukushima in 2011, a tourist group decided to help revitalize tourism in Japan via the creation of Onsenmusume, or ‘hot spring girls’. This combined anime girls, idol bands and tourism. They created characters based on certain locations in Japan, and used them for promotions and to attract tourists. This became a success and the number of characters increased to exceed 100 today. Most of the hot springs I’ve visited have had their ‘own’ hot spring girl, but Arima takes it to a new level since it seems to be not only the hot spring girl characters but also ones from the game/anime Love Live all around the town.

Life-sized standees in particular are common, and we’ve seen dozens of different ones in hotels, shops and shrines.

I’m not familiar enough with these characters to know if they’re from Love Live or not (but I suspect they are), but some standees seem hotel-specific which is to say the character seems to be assigned to a hotel. Here’s ours for instance:

The circular sign on the left shows the pin badge for this hotel, which features this character standing in front of the entrance. I’m sure many hotels here in Arima have their own custom badges with different girls.

I was reading that the use of anime girls to promote onsen tourism has been quite successful, and there are rules in place – such as no online sales of merchandise – that have helped. As a visitor it’s an unusual sight, since this town is very much about tradition and yet there’s anime girl standees all over the place!

One store has a little ‘shrine’ set up showing a vast range of keychains and character merchandise. None of it is for sale, but it’s a glimpse into the extent of this branding for almost 15 years now.

Apparently there are hot spring girls now in every prefecture and district in Japan. We’re going to another onsen in a few days. I wonder if they’ll have their own?

It was an early start to the day since we wanted to be at the hotel springs when they opened at 5 am. Afterwards we relaxed in the room until mid morning when we walked toward our first destination for the day.

Arima is very close to the port city of Kobe which is why (I assume) this town has some Kobe manhole covers. Most of the covers depict a ropeway. We rode it today.

It takes twenty minutes to get to the top of Mount Rokko from the ropeway station at the mountain base, and as we climbed we noticed that sections of the forest were visibly light grey. This was due to frost, and it was a beautiful sight especially as we pulled into the station on the mountaintop.

Mount Rokko had a variety of attractions, but many of them (such as hikes and obstacle courses) are probably better left for warmer days. It was very cold at the top today, and many surfaces still had a good layer of frost when we arrived.

The views south from the observation platform were superb, and we could see for what seemed like forever in a wide arc.

It’s a little unclear in the photo, but this shows Osaka and Kobe cities down at sea level and the Seto Inland Sea behind them. Both are destinations for us in the near future.

We didn’t stay at the top very long, and the ropeway ride back down was even more spectacular. The attendant gave a nonstop commentary about the sights far below the carriage, but it was all in Japanese.

After lunch, we split up. KLS would do some shopping, and I went to visit a stamp museum! I wasn’t sure what to expect, but wasn’t disappointed.

The museum catalogued the history of postage in Japan with (literal) walls of text accompanied by stamps. Hundreds of stamps were showcased, dating back to the penny black from the 1800s. It was specific to Japan, except for a few exceptions such as this pearl shell ‘postcard’ sent from Australia to England in 2007:

I especially liked the licensed stamp display. Here’s a few examples:

I’d love to buy some of those and use them on postcards! Overall I enjoyed the stamp museum, although I admit it’s unlikely to impress most, and even less likely for those (like me) that can’t read Japanese!

Afterwards I must have been in a museum mood since I visited… this place:

Optimistically, this is the ‘salt & pepper shaker museum’, but in reality I expect it’s a private collection on display above a shop.

This place was even more niche appeal than the stamp museum, and I had a good chuckle over the fact they even had a board describing what salt and pepper shakers even are! I suppose if you know that means you’re very old 🙂

The above photo shows a foot bath which is freely usable on the shopping street, or perhaps would be if it’s not always full to seat capacity! The golden colour of the water isn’t a camera effect: this is one of the two types of water here in the Arima springs, and this ‘golden water’ is said to be good for your skin, as well as exhaustion.

Arima is great. It’s quiet and relaxing, but also has a lovely street with quirky shops and good food. The hot springs are fantastic, and there’s several attractions nearby to also check out if you visit. It was very busy today (a Saturday) with both young and old, and this is clearly more popular amongst Japanese than any of the other four onsen towns I’ve visited. You’d like it here.