KOBE -- Pointing to photos posted along a quiet street in the Mikura district of Kobe's Nagata Ward, the head of a local community council explained how the area was once a shopping arcade.
"It used to be crowded with shoppers," Hiroyuki Shibamoto told the group standing before him -- participants in a 2-km walking tour of the area.
The spot where they stood, with a neat row of new houses along a 6-meter wide street, bears no resemblance to the bustling shopping street that can now only be seen in photographs taken before the devastating earthquake that hit Kobe and adjacent areas on Jan. 17, 1995.