I took the Tokaido Shinkansen (bullet train) that morning and got to Osaka two and a half hours later then it was a small train to Kobe itself. It was quite a wonderful sensation with the foreign landscape blurring by while the distance. The train itself is referred to as a Nozomi, stopping only at the most important stations. To think that this amazing icon of modern land transportation will more then likely never make it to the US is mind blowing.
I saw the Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge, aka Pearl Bridge, in the distance from my hotel window and knew I had to make that a visit before the day was over. It light up the night sky, like an aurora borealis of shimmering steel. There’s no visitor center for the bridge but I was able to get information from the local guide book. The bridge, designed by the Honshu-Shikoku Bridge Authority, carries 6 lanes of traffic, connecting Awaii Island and Kobe proper over Akashi Strait.
The hotel concierge told me the suspension bridge was completed in 1998 at a length of 12,828 feter and cables that reach a length of 300,000 kilometers. That’s enough to circle the earth 7 times! The two towers that combine the three spans reach up into the sky 928 feet, higher then any other bridge in the world. It withstands winds of 286 kilometers per hour and earthquakes up to 8.5.
I couldn’t believe the cost to cross the Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge, 2,300 Yen (roughly $20), guess they need to recover the 500 billion Yen cost somehow ($5 billion).
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