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.) |