Foggy Mt. Rokko on a Cold Summer Day

   We visited Mt. Rokko, 6 helmet-like hills, which run east-west along the northen edge of Osaka Bay.  The cliffs fall into the sea and the sash-like city of Kobe lies between the hills and the sea.  This means Kobe can provide a good port to berth big ships, and actually the port was one of the first ones opened to foreign countries at the end of Edo Era.  Many foreigners resided around the harbor of Kobe, and developed Mt. Rokko as their summer resort.  It is very understandable that they needed to escape from the heat and humidity in the Kansai area, and so did we.   It started raining when we left Sakai, and was pouring as we got to Ashiya, a tranquil residential town just east of Kobe, which is one of the entrances into Mt. Rokko.  The rain reminded us of our family trip to Nagasaki, one of the oldest port towns which were opened to the world enen in the national seclusion, during the last spring vacation.  The hilly town of Ashiya resembles Nagasaki in a sense, too.  While Nagasaki is wellknown for its Kasutera, Japanese-style sponge cake, Ashiya is famous for its piles of confectionaries.  Western residents around the port of Kobe caused circles of ripples which crossed at the Ashiya area with the other ripples caused by the upper class of merchants in Osaka.  That is how the Western-style confectionists were born and have been raised along this area.  My daughters envy today's neighbourhood there for their abundance of sweets.   As I mentioned before, the ripples caused by the Western settlement along the bay area also crossed with the hedge of Mt. Rokko, which resulted in the resort area.  The place is very suitable to spend usual summer days, so it was very cold this summer, with a cold and chilly fog pressing around us.  The fog prevented us from being active in the hills during the day, and almost hindered us from finding our hotel in the evening.  Anyway, in the afternoon,  we decided to escape from the shivery fog, although our first intention had been to escape from the heat of the lower world, and we went down the mountain to visit Akashi Kaikyo Bridge via Ura-Rokko (the north-western slope).  Our choice of route turned out to be a mistake.  We headed south and had nearly arrived at Maiko, where the bridge is located, to find we had no choice but to drive eastward and go through the town of the southern slope as far as the sea shore.  There we turnd westward again and drove through the narrow and much tied-up passage of Suma.  These days the prefectures in Kansai talked about building a network of tourist resorts to help tourists make their way around.  Much is talked about; little is done.   Akashi Kaikyo Bridge was something to see.  Its Kobe-side anchorage has a promenade beneath the bridge for dozens of meters.  The promenade has several windows underfoot.  It was really exciting especially on such a rough day.  We found several Chinese-speaking tourists.  They seemed to consist of a couple of groups and/or families, and I could not tell which were from Mainland and which were from Taiwan.  The neighbouring area has an old building, Ijo-Kaku in Japanese or Yiqing-Ge in Chinese, which was built by a Chinese businessman nearly a hundred years ago, and is famous because it was visited by Sun Wen.  Sun Wen was a lucky guy, who lived long enough to overthrow the Qing Dynasty, and short enough to be praised both by the Kuomin Party and by the Communist Party.  Either side could interpret him in their own favor.  The super modern Japanese architecture and the historical monument of East Asia, in collaboration, might have been the attraction for various Chinese-speaking people.
   Next morning, at our younger daughter's request, we rode a ropeway first.  We were just floating in the middle of white mist.  Occasional and sudden appearance of green branches reminded us that we were heading somewhere.  And we arrived somewhere, which should have provided us the splendid view of the city Kobe.  The place name is Tengu-iwa (a rock in the shape of a Japanese long-nosed goblin).  The genie, which should have been only dozens of meters away, probably hid himself from us with the thickness of the mist.  Her next request was to visit Alpine Flora Garden.  The milky mist gave us the effect that we were virtually climbing high mountains.