KOBE ATTRACTIONS
Kobe Attractions - Kobe attractions and Kobe sight
seeing highlights.
Kobe Sight Seeing
Ijinkan (異人館) (walking distance from either Sannomiya or Shin-Kobe
stations) Kōbe's number-one attraction is the Ijinkan or Barbarian
Houses. These are 19th-century residences of Kobe's foreign traders,
clustered in the Kitano area. Europeans who grew up in similar scenery
may find them less fascinating.
Meriken Park (メリケンパーク) near the harborfront has a poignant memorial to
the devastating Hanshin Earthquake in 1995, which killed 6,433 people.
Kobe Tower nearby is the unofficial symbol of the city and offers a
viewing pavilion („600).
Harbour Land (adjacent to Kobe station). This is a modern shopping and
dining area, developed on the edge of the Kobe Bay.
Kōbe is a well-known center of sake production and many sake breweries
are in the Nada (灘) area, and have tours or museums open to the
public. You can pick up a map of the sake breweries at the tourist
information office in Sannomiya.
Sawa-no-Tsuru Museum (沢の鶴資料館) (10-minute walk from Hanshin Ōishi
station 大石駅). 078-882-7788. Open daily 10 AM to 4 PM, closed Weds.
This museum is probably the best of the bunch, with an informative
multi-level exhibit partly labeled in English, and a well-stocked gift
shop. Free entry, but no free sake.
Hakutsuru Sake Brewery Museum (walking distance from Hankyu Mikage
station 御影駅 or Sumiyoshi station 住吉駅), 078-822-8907. Open daily 9:30
AM to 4:30 PM, closed Mon. This museum is located inside a former
brewery, and features traditional tools, dioramas and English-language
videos to explain the sake-making processes. At the end, you can
sample some sake, which is non-pasteurized, presumably because it
doesn't have to travel far from the factory. Write your name on a
piece of paper provided by the guard and return that at the end. Free
entry, free sake.
Hamafukutsuru-Ginjo Brewery and Shop Open daily 10 AM to 5 PM, closed
Mon. 078-411-0492. Reportedly, Hamafukutsuru offers factory tours,
rather than just a museum.
What to do in Kobe
Rokko (六甲山 Rokko-san) and its Rock Garden, the
first an easy cable car trip for suitable romantic evenings, the
second a light day's hiking with an excellent view. The view over the
glittering expanse of Osaka Bay is canonized as one of the Three Great
Night Views.
Get out of Kobe
Arima Onsen, a hot-spring town located at the terminus of the Mt. Rokko cable car
Himeji, a small town with Japan's most beautiful castle, is a 20
minute train ride away.
(Article
based on
Wikitravel article
by Wikitravel users Jose Ramos, Namgay Dorji, Bujdosó Attila, Brian
Kurkoski and Mark Jaroski and Wikitravel user(s) Janki, Jpatokal and
Nzpcmad. and Anonymous user(s) of Wikitravel. Article used under
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 1.0.) |
