Kobe: New Towns, Arima Onsen (有馬温泉) and Mt. Rokko (六甲山)

On December 31, 2011, I visited Kobe, Japan (神戸) again as part of a trip to the Kansai (関西) area because luckily I had a Japanese classmate who was going back to his hometown in the Kansai area for the New Years Holidays and I could share a ride in his car for the 4 hour journey from the campus of Hiroshima University to the Kobe suburban town of Kakogawa (加古川).

I actually arrived in Kobe the previous day at around mid-afternoon and I stayed at a hotel north of the main Sannomiya (三宮) railway station called the Hotel Area One. In all my travels around Japan, it was one of the worst stays I ever had in a hotel. The hotel was located right behind a shrine and in preparation for the new year, the shrine was open for some sort of festival the entire night and because buildings in Japan generally have poor noise insulation, from the room, the noise was so loud that I could hardly sleep!

Generally in my opinion, there are not a good range of easily accessible hotels in Kobe, it is often better to stay in a hotel in Osaka and just take the 30 minute train ride to Kobe as there is a large selection of affordable and cheap hotels in Osaka.

One of the reasons for visiting Kobe (again) was to see the areas of Kobe that I had never seen before this was mainly the Kobe new town suburbs, Arima Onsen (有馬温泉) and Mt. Rokko (六甲山).

One of the interesting things I saw by chance in Kobe, the Gigantor (鉄人28号, Tetsujin 28-gō) statue.

Kobe Walks: Chinatown, Waterfront

On Sept. 22, 2010, after I finished my morning visit to the Instant Ramen Museum, since I was already located west of Osaka, I decided to visit Kobe again (the cities of Kobe and Osaka are only 30 minutes or less by train away).

Kobe is one of my favorite cities in Japan because it has such a nice atmosphere. It is very compact (the model "compact city"?) yet does not feel overcrowded like Tokyo and the city is also blessed with many historical areas and buildings from the past due its interactions with the Western world during the modernization of Japan.

The Kansai region is unique in that the 3 major cities all have a distinct characteristic unlike the Kanto (Tokyo-Yokohama) metropolitan area where it is just uniform dense urban sprawl for as far as the eyes can see. Kobe is is quite clean and chic compared to the run-down and dirty Osaka, while Kyoto offers a glimpse of the idealized traditional "old Japan" of "samurai and ninja".

I have been to Kobe many times before, but I still like visiting Kobe whenever I am in the Kansai region because I like walking and wandering around to see what new and interesting thing I can bump into.

The view of the Kobe waterfront with the red coloured Kobe Port Tower in the background.

Kobe - The World's Longest Suspension Bridge, City Walks

(Updated: June 1, 2013 with high resolution photos and new descriptions)

On March 31, 2006, I visited Kobe for the second time. The first time was when I visited Kobe on my first trip to Japan in 2004.

The first stop I made was to the Akashi Kaikyo Bridge, the world's longest suspension bridge. The bridge connects the main island of Honshu (where all the major cities of Japan are located) with the island of Shikoku.