Your average Australian, in situations like this, would wander towards the event looking for a way in. That's fine, even if you've got a hundred thousand people looking to get into the Boxing Day Test at the MCG there are a variety of entry points.
Here, with 183 000 people queuing up to file under a spectacular light display on the first night, there are certain procedures that need to be put in place, and this was a Friday night, almost guaranteed to attract an even larger crowd.
We headed in the general direction of the display, found the barricades put in place to direct the flow of pedestrians, and were directed towards the point where we could join the flow. That involved making our way back, almost as far as the station at Motomachi, passing a steady flow of people headed in the opposite direction and wondering how much further the entrance to the queue might be.
We found it eventually, and made our way back to the point where we'd been redirected, which was, effectively, the first curve on a letter S.
The inquisitive reader should, at this point, grab a pen and paper and start a printed S. Stop at the first curve. That's the point we were redirected. The start of the letter is the point of entry, and would have to be a good kilometre away. Now, continue your S, adding another loop at the end of it. The last line contains the couple of hundred metres of spectacular illumination that had probably pulled in around two hundred thousand people that night, and had booked out the hotels in Kobe on Saturday night.