One day in Kobe

Kobe, the capital city of Hyogo Prefecture, is known as one of the best place to live in Japan. It is said that the name of Kobe itself comes from "Kanbe,” the ancient people who belonged to shrines and served for rituals as well as maintaining them.

Kobe is located quite conveniently from Tokyo. From Tokyo, you can take the shinkansen to go there. The nearest station is Shin-Kobe station. It takes around 3 hours via Nozomi or Hikari from Tokyo station.

I woke up early in the morning and went straight to my first destination.

Folks who use Suica will be happy to know that they can use their Suica card in JR lines. Unfortunately, other than JR, the Suica is useless. So it's better to get Icoca card for your convenience.

My first stop was Shin-Nagata station. Wakamatsu Park was the first place I wanted to visit.

Located in Wakamatsu Park is the famous 1:1 scale of Tetsujin 28. Tetsujin 28-go was the first manga to feature a giant robot. It was written and illustrated in 1956 by Mitsuteru Yokoyama. Tetsujin 28 is also known as "Gigantor" in America.

The statue has just been completed in the beginning of October 2009. The height is 18 meters. The statue will be there permanently, so you can visit it anytime you want. Sadly though, they put fences around it so you will not be able to touch it.

Next stop was the Kobe Harborland. Kobe Harborland is a really beautiful section of the city of Kobe.

The view from the port was absolutely gorgeous. Danbo couldn't resist posing in the port.

Not sure what this is. From what I heard, during the Great Hanshin Earthquake in 1995, which destroyed large part of the city and killed 6433 people, the city used this brick method as a way to collect funds. People could buy the brick and write anything they want on it.

The Harborland is also home to the famous Kobe Port Tower. With the height of 108 meters, this red steel tower is a famous tourist’s attraction.

From there, we headed to Motomachi, to China Town. The China Town was quite similar to the one in Yokohama.

If you go to a tourist spot in Japan, I recommend you to visit the tourist information center first. Here we got the Kobe Welcome Coupon for free (after filling in the questionnaire) which gave us discount for all the tourist places.

My next stop was Ijinkan. Ijinkan is a historical district in Kobe which contains a number of foreign residences from the late Meiji and early Taishō eras. You could see and enter a lot of foreign houses such as the English House, Holland House, Uroko House, Denmark House, Starbucks, and so on. It costs from 300 to 1000 yen per house if you want to enter it.

There were lots of house to visit but so little time. I finally decided to go to English House. Inside the English house was a replica of Sherlock Holmes' sitting room. There was also a room where you could do a little bit of cosplaying.

I had a sudden urge to take that pipe.

The journey was far from over. I strolled down the street a bit to enjoy the city view.

Spotted some cute sankaku flowers.

My last stop was the Rokko Mountain.

You need to take a cable car and a bus in order to go there. Here, we could use the Kobe Welcome Coupon.

It was cold and the wind was strong, but the view was too amazing to be missed.

And that's the end of my one day Kobe trip. There were lots of places that I have not visited yet. Perhaps, one day I will visit Kobe again.

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