Difficult station to meet
From Shin-Kobe Station, transfer to the municipal subway for a 7-minute ride. You will arrive at Sannomiya, a popular tourist destination in the Kansai region.
Sannomiya is densely packed with six stations (JR, Hankyu, Hanshin, Nishijin and Yamanote subway lines, Kaigan subway line, and Portliner), and each station name is complicated, so it is probably an area that annoys tourists and business travelers.
First of all, JR Sannomiya Station is located in the city of Sannomiya, but the kanji for “no” is placed between “san” and “miya”.
Please be careful, because you will be noticed as a palace amateur when you send a text message to your friend about where to meet, you might say, “In front of JR Sannomiya without the kanji for ‘no’!”.
Furthermore, Hankyu and Hanshin require the addition of the kanji for “Kobe” before “Sannomiya,” as in “Hankyu Kobe Sannomiya” and “Hanshin Kobe Sannomiya,” respectively.
Kobe is a brand name for residents who, when asked where they are from, answer Kobe City rather than Hyogo Prefecture.
To remove Kobe from the names of Hankyu Sannomiya, Hanshin Sannomiya, etc., is to miss the final touch.
In addition, Sannomiya Station on the Nishijin-Yamate Subway Line, Sannomiya Station on the Kaigan Subway Line, and Sannomiya Station on the Port Liner Line are located nearby.
It is so complicated that if you want to meet in front of Portliner Sannomiya Station, you should say, “Portliner at 9:00 a.m.!” and dare to omit the most important name of Sannomiya.
I hope you understand that this is more difficult to get used to than the English subjunctive past perfect tense.
Stereotype
If this blog becomes famous and is adopted for Japanese-language examination on Sannomiya Station, there will be a line of questions that will make you chew sand. For example, “How many times have you heard the place name Sannomiya up to this point? or “Please choose the correct station name from Hankyu Sannomiya Station, Hankyu Kobe Sannomiya Station, and Kobe Hankyu Sannomiya Station. and “Why is the author not good at meeting people around Sannomiya Station?
If I were a student, I would pass on question 1 because it is a time-consuming and troublesome question, answer 2 is definitely correct at Hankyu Kobe Sannomiya Station, and for question 3, I would write down a tasteless answer on the paper because the author has no sense of direction. It’s just weird to imagine chewing sand in the first place.
By the way, since the Shinkansen is a JR train, many people probably imagine that they take the JR train from Sannomiya Station to the Shinkansen boarding station.
I was one of those who were shocked when I went to JR Kobe, one stop away from JR Sannomiya Station, and looked for the Shinkansen platform, but could not find it.
If you are a tourist who stays in the Sannomiya area until the last minute, you may suffer from the tragedy of missing the Shinkansen.
If you want to be sure of getting on the Shinkansen, as I wrote in the first line of my blog, please head for Shin-Kobe Station from the 9 and 3/4 subway lines at Sannomiya Station on the Nishijin-Yamate subway line, not JR.
It may even be called the Hogwarts of Kobe.
Born in Sannomiya!
Speaking of the mystery of station names, has anyone else noticed that the Shinkansen stops at many stations with “Shin” in their names?
From Tokyo Station to Hakata in Kyushu, the Kodama bullet train stops at 9 stations out of 35, or about a quarter of the time.
In my earlier Japanese test fantasy, it might have been more useful to ask the question, “What are the nine stations with Shin of their names in the Shinkansen stops?”
This time I used the Nozomi Shinkansen, but Shin-Yokohama, Shin-Osaka, and Shin-Kobe are representative cities of Japan, with Yokohama, Osaka, and Kobe, respectively, also having “stations without Shin in their names”.
“Even Japanese people are confused, but for foreign tourists, it must not make sense.”
When I mentioned this to a friend from Sannomiya, Kobe, he explained that the station with “Shin” is the Shinkansen stops and the one without “Shin” is the downtown area, which is a recommended tourist spot.
It certainly makes sense for JR Yokohama Station and JR Osaka Station. However, JR Kobe Station is clearly out of the center of Kobe and a weak tourist destination.
He must be the kind of person who, when asked where he is from, answers Sannomiya, not Kobe.
