Rory Cooke, Japan: Its People and Culture, Summer 2026
I spent five weeks living in Kobe this summer, and by the end of it I was comfortable enough that coming home felt a little strange. Kobe is not usually the first city people think of when they think about Japan, however, I believe that it ended up being somewhere I could genuinely see myself living.
The first thing that stood out, and this is true of most of Japan, is how walkable the whole city is. Coming from a place where every plan starts with figuring out who is driving and where everyone is going to park, it was a strange kind of freedom to realize that I could just leave my hotel and go, and that if somewhere was too far to walk to there was a train that would take me there in fifteen minutes for a couple of dollars. That may sound like a small quality of life thing,
but it completely changed how I spent my time, because when going out costs you nothing except deciding to do it, you go out constantly.
The other thing I noticed early on is that I never felt unsafe there, at any point, no matter the time of day or night. Walking back at one in the morning felt exactly the same as walking around at noon in terms of safety, and after about a week I stopped thinking about it entirely, which I only really appreciated once I got home and realized how much I had gotten used to it. Kobe is a lively city, especially at night, and the area around Sannomiya was busy at basically every
hour, but it never felt like it was pressing in on me the way a lot of busy places do. It seemed like everyone was able to go out and enjoy themselves without anyone else feeling crowded out or intimidated, and that held true even for someone like me whose Japanese was not very good. People were consistently friendly and patient with me, and I got through plenty of conversations without ever getting the sense that anyone minded.
It also helps that Kobe is in a great spot geographically, with the water right there and the mountains behind you, which squeezes the whole city into a narrow strip and makes it feel smaller and more knowable than it actually is. On top of that it is close to everything else worth seeing, since Osaka is a short train ride away and Kyoto is not much further, so weekends and even days after class never had a shortage of options. Some days were shopping, some days were an event or the beach, and plenty of days were just getting on the train with no particular
destination and walking around whatever neighborhood I ended up in, finding shrines and side streets and shops I never would have planned to visit.
By the end of the five weeks I had stopped thinking of Kobe as a place I was staying in and started thinking of it as somewhere I lived. I am incredibly glad that I was able to experience it, and I will never forget all the great memories I made
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