Putting Blackpool in the Shade

Every year since 1995, Kobe has staged an illumination festival as a memorial to the lives lost in the Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake. The Luminarie attracts on average a staggering 4.5 million people, which is one million more than attend our own venerated luminous event, Blackpool Illuminations, which lasts over two months. It's the equivalent of the entire population of where we live - Northern Ireland - going three times. And it's so impressive, it's probably worth going to three times.

Every evening for two weeks just before Christmas, roads around the downtown Motomachi district are cordoned off and an army of hired hands with flashing batons shepherd the many thousands of visitors towards a street decorated with an estimated 200,000 light bulbs.

The Italian designers responsible for the Luminarie use a street in the more up-market shopping district of Kobe to create a kind of baroque tunnel of light, giving it a festive tweak with specially commissioned orchestral music. Locals complain about the excessive crowding, but on a cool, clear night we found that the mass of spectators moved fluidly and it was not particularly overbearing. I felt a little out of place carrying a camera - with so many 4-zillion-megapixel mobile phones in evidence it seemed more than a little old-fashioned.

The Luminarie culminates in the park outside the Kobe City Hall. Here there is another impressive pavillion of arches and light and the inevitable 'yatai' - market stalls selling among other things the even more inevitable takoyaki, a truly repellent fried dumpling made of batter and fried octopus. The only redeeming feature of the many, many takoyaki vendors in Kobe is that they all seem to employ the same cartoon octopus featured in that fantastic episode of The Simpsons - 'Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo*'.

Tacky , or even takoyaki, though it is, it doesn't plumb the depths of the some of the life-threatening fayre on offer last time I went to Blackpool a few years back. Although we could probably make a small fortune over here importing 'Kiss Me Quick' hats...

* never shown in Japan, apparently, on account of the scene where Homer hurls the Emperor of Japan into a pile of used "sumo thongs". For those of you have seen this episode it is hard to think of any part of it that is NOT offensive to the Japanese.