Kobe

Kansai, Japan · City

The city is wedged between the mountains and the sea, and that narrowness explains most of it: you cross the Rokko range on foot, where modern Japanese hiking began, and drop by ropeway straight into Arima, a spa town that is administratively part of Kobe and runs two separate waters, the iron-rich gold and the radon silver. Up top, the Maya terrace is one of the country's three great night views; down below, certified beef comes with the animal's number on the wall.

The essentials

Getting there

Train — Very close to Osaka by train

What it is genuinely strong in

🔭 Viewpoints & panoramas🏛️ Architecture

Frequently asked questions about Kobe

What to do in Kobe: 80 activities

• Eating real Kobe beef without going broke 2 h must-see

  Only Tajima cattle born and raised in Hyogo that clear a strict marbling and quality bar are certified as Kobe beef: a few thousand head a year, and a restaurant serving it displays a numbered bronze plaque plus the certificate bearing the animal's nose print. Dinner at the classic downtown teppanyaki counters runs 15,000-25,000 yen, while many places do lunch steaks from around 3,000; be aware that a good share of those cheap sets are wagyu from elsewhere, not certified Kobe.

• Grilled Kobe Wagyu Beef Dinner 1.5 h must-see booking

  Japan's most famous beef, cooked teppanyaki-style right in front of you.

• Kikuseidai lookout on Mount Maya 3 h must-see

  The terrace on Mount Maya, 700 metres up, is the one on the classic list of Japan's three great night views alongside Hakodate and Nagasaki: a single ribbon of light from Osaka to Akashi. You get there by funicular and ropeway (1,540 yen return) from the stop on Sannomiya city bus 18, but on weekdays the last descent is 17:30 and only on weekends and holidays does it run to 20:50, so the night view is not available every day; closed Tuesdays.

• Night View from Mt. Rokko 2 h must-see

  Regarded as one of Japan's three most spectacular night views, overlooking Kobe Bay.

• Arima Onsen: the gold and silver baths 2.5 h

  Arima belongs administratively to Kobe and is half an hour from the centre: one of Japan's three oldest hot-spring resorts, cited in eighth-century chronicles, with two distinct waters, the iron-rich gold and the radon silver.

• Kobe Port Tower, reopened 1 h

  The red hyperboloid lattice tower of 1963 reopened in April 2024 after three years of work, with a new walk-out rooftop deck at the top of its 108 metres. The observation floor costs 1,000 yen, observation plus rooftop 1,200, with timed-entry tickets that sell out on holidays; the rooftop closes in wind or rain and bans tripods and umbrellas.

• Pork buns at Roushouki in Chinatown 0.5 h

  The stall that brought the Tianjin-style steamed pork bun to Japan opened in 1915 and is still run by the same family: 120 yen apiece, minimum three, eaten standing at the counter. Open 10:00-18:30 or until sold out, usually closed Mondays, with a 30-60 minute queue at weekends; while the historic shop is being rebuilt it trades from a temporary unit a few doors away on Motomachi-dori 1-chome.

• Uonotana market and akashiyaki 2 h Akashi · 15 min

  Akashi is a separate city, fifteen minutes by train from Sannomiya, and its fish arcade has been trading for four centuries: about a hundred stalls with live octopus, conger eel and the sea bream of the strait, plus tempura counters to eat on the move. The speciality is akashiyaki, known locally as tamagoyaki: wobbly egg-and-octopus balls served with no sauce but dipped in hot dashi, ten to fifteen pieces for 600-900 yen. Many stalls close on Mondays.

• Weathercock House and Moegi House 1.5 h

  The only two Kitano mansions designated National Important Cultural Properties, and the only ones run by the city: the brick Weathercock House (1909) belonged to German trader Gottfried Thomas, and the pistachio-green wooden Moegi House (1903) to US consul Hunter Sharp. Admission is 500 and 400 yen separately, or 650 yen for the combined pass; every other house in the district is privately run and charges its own fee, up to 1,050 yen for Uroko House.

• A Tadao Ando route through his own city 3 h

  Ando grew up and trained in the Osaka-Kobe area and you can follow him here for almost nothing: the Kodomo Hon no Mori children's library, which he designed and donated to the city in 2022 in Higashi Yuenchi Park, is free, opens 9:30-17:00, closes Mondays and only requires booking at weekends in 90-minute slots; the prefectural museum holds a dedicated gallery of his models; and on the Rokko slope stand the stepped blocks of Rokko Housing, visible only from outside since they are private flats.

• Akashi Castle and the 135th meridian 2 h Akashi · 15 min

  Japan's official time is set by the 135th meridian east, which runs through Akashi, and on the line itself stands a clock tower with a planetarium whose 1960 Zeiss projector is the oldest still in service in the country. Five minutes away is the castle park, with two surviving 17th-century turrets designated Important Cultural Properties and a garden attributed to Kobori Enshu.

• Arima's carbonated spring, crackers and soda 1 h Arima (Kita-ku, Kobe) · 35 min

  Besides its iron-rich brown water, Arima has a carbonated spring whose wellhead you can see and drink from in a small free park up the hill. Two things came out of it that are still sold along the main street: tansan crackers, wafer-thin and barely sweet, baked in front of you in several shops, and a local bottled soda that tastes of salted lemon.

• Beef croquettes at the Motomachi butcher 0.5 h

  Moriya Shoten has been selling Kobe beef in the Motomachi arcade since 1873 and fries croquettes and minced-beef cutlets at the door using trimmings from the same animals: a few hundred yen a piece, handed over in paper to eat standing. The queue rarely drops below ten minutes and the better cuts sell out by late afternoon; prices have been raised several times in recent years.

• Chinese New Year in Nankinmachi 2.5 h only three days of Lunar New Year

  For three days around Lunar New Year, Chinatown puts on lion dances, acrobatics and a parade of Chinese court costumes that winds through Motomachi to the park. It is by far the busiest moment of the year in an already tiny quarter: 270 metres of street and about a hundred businesses, so stalls sell out early and moving around is slow.

• Climb up the tower of the Akashi-Kaikyo bridge 2.5 h booking

  Guided visit along the maintenance walkway to the top of the tower, 300 metres above the strait; it was the longest-span suspension bridge in the world until 2022.

• Five evenings of harbour fireworks 2 h only five afternoons in a row in October

  The old one-night fireworks festival, which used to draw a quarter of a million people, was discontinued; the city now spreads the displays over five consecutive October evenings (19-23 October in 2026) above Meriken Park, with live music before and after. Watching from the park is free; reserved seats on the Shinko pier cost 2,200 yen.

• Frank Lloyd Wright's Yamamura House 1.5 h Ashiya · 20 min

  On the Ashiya hillside twenty minutes east stands the only Frank Lloyd Wright house left standing in Japan: commissioned in 1918 by a Nada sake brewer and finished in 1924, in carved Oya stone, with terraces stepping down the slope. It opens only Wednesdays, Saturdays, Sundays and holidays from 10:00 to 16:00, costs 500 yen, cash only, and involves a steep ten-minute walk up from Ashiyagawa station.

• Freundlieb, a German bakery inside a church 1 h

  Heinrich Freundlieb arrived in Japan as a German prisoner of war in 1919 and stayed to bake bread; his firm now occupies Kobe's former Union Church of 1929, a registered wooden building, with the bakery below and the café in the nave under the trusses and stained glass. Sandwiches and biscuits sell out by midday and it closes on Wednesdays.

• Gohonmatsu Dam and the walk above the falls 2.5 h

  Half an hour uphill from the shinkansen station, past the four Nunobiki waterfalls, you reach a reservoir held back by Japan's oldest concrete gravity dam, finished in 1900 and designated an Important Cultural Property; it is still in use, and its water was the one sailing ships loaded because it kept for months without spoiling. The path is paved or stepped nearly all the way, costs nothing, and you can come back down on the herb garden ropeway.

• Gyoza with miso dipping sauce 1 h

  In Kobe dumplings are not dipped in vinegar and soy but in a miso paste you thin with sauce to taste, a habit that started in the 1950s at a Nankinmachi shop whose founder had come back from Manchuria. Every house guards its own blend: thick red miso at the veteran Sannomiya taverns, white miso elsewhere, and one place works Kobe beef into the filling. A plate of seven with a beer comes to under 1,000 yen.

• Hideyoshi's excavated bathhouse 1 h Arima (Kita-ku, Kobe) · 35 min

  The 1995 earthquake wrecked Gokurakuji temple and revealed beneath it the remains of the steam room and tub Toyotomi Hideyoshi had built at Arima in the late 16th century; they are now displayed under cover at the Taiko no Yudonokan for 200 yen, along with roof tiles and pottery from the dig. Two minutes from Kin no Yu, closed Tuesdays.

• Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art 2 h

  A Tadao Ando building facing the sea, the largest art museum in western Japan, with its giant green apple on the terrace.

• Kiku-Masamune and the cedar barrel workshop 1.5 h

  Free entry to a museum of brewing tools designated a folk cultural property and, in the shed next door, the only workshop in Japan where a handful of coopers still build cedar sake barrels with bamboo hoops, without a single nail or drop of glue. Seasonal sake is poured free, including the woody taruzake, and it is a ten-minute walk from Hanshin Uozaki station.

• Kitano Tenman Shrine and the lookout slope 0.75 h

  Founded in 1180, when Taira no Kiyomori moved the capital to Fukuhara and brought the deity Tenjin here from Kyoto; the whole Kitano district takes its name from it. A steep stairway right behind the Weathercock House leads up to a terrace where you look down on the famous weathervane roof against the harbour. Free, with no strict closing time.

• Kitano's Western-Style Houses District 1.5 h

  European-style residences built by foreign merchants in the 19th century.

• Kobe Animal Kingdom 3 h

  Greenhouse where hanging flowers and free-roaming animals share the same space; it works just as well whatever the weather.

• Kobe Architecture Festival 4 h only three days in early May

  Three days in May (8-10 in 2026) when dozens of buildings normally shut open to the public: banks in the old foreign settlement, 1920s shipping headquarters, Kitano houses that are never shown and historic schools. You buy a passport ticket and some interiors run on timed slots; the thread running through it is what survived the 1945 firebombing and the 1995 earthquake, and what was rebuilt.

• Kobe bread route 1.5 h

  Kobe is the city in Japan that spends the most on bread and the one with the highest density of bakeries, an inheritance from the European bakers who arrived when the port opened in 1868.

• Kobe City Museum 2 h

  It occupies the former Yokohama Specie Bank of 1935, granite colonnade and all, in the heart of the old foreign settlement. It holds the fourteen Sakuragaoka bronze dotaku bells, found on a city hillside in 1964 and designated National Treasures, and one of the world's largest collections of Namban art, the Japanese painting that recorded the 16th-century Portuguese. The permanent collection costs 300 yen and closes on Mondays; on Fridays and Saturdays it stays open to 20:00.

• Kobe Luminarie 1.5 h only late January to early February

  Arches of light held in memory of the 1995 earthquake. Since 2024 it takes place in late January and early February, around the 17 January anniversary; before that it was held in December.

• Kobe Suma Sea World 3.5 h

  The old Suma aquarium was demolished and in June 2024 this complex opened in its place, the only one in western Japan with orcas, transferred from another Japanese park. Admission runs 2,900-3,700 yen depending on the season and timed online tickets are advisable. Know what you are paying for: the show is built on captive cetaceans in tanks, a practice increasingly questioned and banned outright in several countries.

• Kobe, cradle of Japanese jazz 2.5 h

  Japan's first professional jazz band played here in 1923; there are clubs with live music every night, and in October the city holds its street jazz festival.

• Live-music dinner cruise round the bay 2 h booking

  Restaurant boats leave the Harborland pier for a two-hour loop of the bay with live piano or jazz while you eat, passing under the Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge on the longer sailings. Book several days ahead, and note that the boarding fee is charged separately from the meal, so check the combined price before committing.

• Maiko promenade under the bridge and Sun Yat-sen's villa 2 h

  A public walkway runs under the deck of the Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge, 47 metres above the water, with two glass-floored panels looking straight down into the strait: 250 yen on weekdays and 300 on weekends, far cheaper than the tower climb and needing no booking. At its foot stands the Ijokaku, an octagonal 1915 pavilion and Important Cultural Property, now a museum to Sun Yat-sen, who stayed in Kobe; closed Mondays.

• Memorial museum of the 1995 earthquake 2 h

  Immersive reconstruction of the quake that destroyed the city and of how it was rebuilt; in the port a sunken stretch of quay is preserved intact, exactly as it was left.

• Mount Rokko traverse and ropeway to Arima 4 h

  Rokko is where modern Japanese hiking was born: you cross the range on foot from the city and drop down by ropeway straight into the Arima spa town.

• Municipal arboretum and the maples of northern Rokko 3 h

  A hundred and forty hectares of planted forest on the northern slope of Rokko, with tree collections arranged by continent and some 3,000 maples of Japanese, American and European varieties that turn colour in waves from late October to late November; on certain evenings in that window it opens after dark with lighting. Reached by subway to Kita-Suzurandai plus a bus, or twenty-five minutes by car from the centre.

• Nada Sake District and Hakutsuru Museum 2 h

  A tour through Nada's historic sake breweries, with a tasting at the Hakutsuru Museum.

• Nagata: Koreans, Vietnamese and the earthquake radio 2.5 h

  Nagata was the rubber-shoe factory district, which employed Korean workers for decades, and from 1979 it also took in Vietnamese refugees arriving through the Himeji reception centre; today Korean offal grills around Shin-Nagata sit alongside Vietnamese bakeries and canteens near Takatori. It is a place people live rather than a showcase: the 1995 earthquake flattened it, and out of that came a community radio station broadcasting in several languages that is still on air.

• Night at a historic ryokan in Arima 14 h booking

  Some inns have been lodging pilgrims and lords since the 12th century; Hideyoshi turned Arima into his personal retreat and several houses preserve rooms from that period.

• Rokko Alpine Botanical Garden 1.5 h

  Opened in 1933 to exploit the fact that at 865 metres the average temperature matches Hokkaido's, it is Japan's oldest alpine garden and grows some 1,500 species, including the translucent ghost plant that flowers in June. It closes from late November to mid-March apart from a special illuminated winter opening; it sits on the Rokko summit, reached by cable car plus mountain bus.

• Rokko pasture with sheep and cheese 2.5 h

  A Swiss-style meadow on the summit with free-roaming sheep you can touch, cattle, a working sheepdog and a dairy making mozzarella and camembert from its own milk. It covers around 100 walkable hectares, is reached by bus from the cable car station and runs several degrees cooler than the city in summer; in winter the sheep are brought in and the visit loses half its point.

• Sawanotsuru Museum, the brewery that was rebuilt 1 h

  A 19th-century wooden brewhouse turned into a free museum, with brewing tools listed as a prefectural folk cultural property. The building collapsed completely in the 1995 earthquake and was reassembled piece by piece from the salvaged timber, which is really what the visit is about; the shop next door pours free tastings.

• Shu-shin-kan, the brewery behind the Nobel sake 1.5 h booking

  This is where Fukuju is made, the sake poured at the Nobel Prize banquet in Stockholm. There are two tours and both need booking: the free one lasts half an hour, between 11:00 and 15:30, while the paid one at 16:30 costs 3,300 yen, runs an hour with a tasting of their premium labels and takes adults only in groups of two to six. The compound also has a brewery restaurant and occasional concerts under the beams.

• Soraku-en azaleas and the Hassam House interior 1.5 h

  In early May the only feudal-lord garden left in the city brings out several thousand azaleas at once, and it draws more visitors than at any other point in the year; admission still costs about 300 yen. In those same weeks the interior of Hassam House usually opens, the 1902 brick residence moved here from Kitano and otherwise only visible from outside: when it does open it is the one chance to walk through a furnished foreigner's house without paying a separate fee.

• Stroll Through the Port and Harborland 1.5 h

  A revitalized waterfront area with modern architecture by the sea.

• Suma Rikyu Park, the imperial villa that did not survive 2 h

  The Muko imperial villa was built here in 1914 for Emperor Taisho; the 1945 bombing destroyed it and in 1967 the grounds opened as a public park to mark an imperial wedding. What remains is the formal French layout with its staircase and stepped fountains facing the sea, plus a rose garden of some 180 varieties at its best from early May to early June; 400 yen, closed Thursdays.

• Taiko no Yu, the big bathhouse of Arima 3.5 h Arima (Kita-ku, Kobe) · 35 min

  Unlike the two small municipal baths in the centre, this complex beside Arima Onsen station has more than twenty pools across the iron-brown water, the clear water and several salt and stone steam rooms, and it is built for spending half a day inside: admission of around 3,000 yen includes a yukata and towels and lets you move between the relaxation areas. Visible tattoos are refused, patches included, and it fills up by midday at weekends.

• Takarazuka Revue 4 h booking Takarazuka · 40 min

  The all-female company founded in 1914 by the Hankyu railway still performs almost daily in its 2,500-seat theatre in Takarazuka, about forty minutes from Sannomiya changing trains at Nishinomiya-Kitaguchi. Tickets run from around 4,000 to 12,500 yen, are sold by lottery weeks ahead, and the handful of same-day seats goes first thing. Since 2023 the company has been dealing with a serious workplace-harassment scandal that management admitted after the death of a young performer.

• The 17 January vigil 1.5 h only 17 Jan

  Every 17 January at Higashi Yuenchi Park, thousands of bamboo lanterns are laid out to spell a word chosen by survivors and lit at 5:46 a.m., the exact moment of the 1995 earthquake. It is the city's act of mourning rather than a show: people pray, leave flowers and move on; candles stay lit through the day.

• The five faiths of Kitano 1.5 h

  Within a ten-minute walk you find Kobe Muslim Mosque (1935), Japan's oldest, which survived both the 1945 firebombing and the 1995 earthquake; the country's only Jain temple; the Ohel Shelomoh synagogue; a Russian Orthodox church and a Catholic one. The mosque welcomes visitors free of charge outside prayer times, with arms and legs covered, a scarf for women and shoes off; the others are working places of worship and some can only be seen from outside.

• The Tetsujin 28 robot in Nagata 1 h

  An 18-metre robot raised in the district worst devastated by the earthquake as a symbol of the reconstruction, in tribute to Yokoyama Mitsuteru, a manga artist born in Kobe.

• Workshops and back lanes of Arima 1.5 h

  Narrow slopes with ningyo-fude brushes (which hide a tiny doll revealed when wetted), bamboo basketry and the tansan crackers invented to make use of the town's carbonated water.

• Yumebutai and the Water Temple on Awaji 4 h Awaji · 70 min

  An hour or so by highway bus from Sannomiya, across the bridge, lies Ando's largest complex: Yumebutai, built on the hillside that was quarried away to fill in Kansai Airport and which he stitched back together with a hundred flower terraces and sheets of water. A quarter of an hour further is Honpukuji, the 1991 Water Temple, an oval lotus pond with a staircase descending through its centre into a red-lacquered hall; a modest fee, and silence expected since it is a working temple.

• Zuihoji Park and autumn in Arima 1.5 h Arima (Kita-ku, Kobe) · 35 min

  Above the hot-spring town, on the ruins of a temple Hideyoshi used for his tea gatherings, sit a maple park, a go board carved into stone and the old temple gate. The colour comes late, mid to late November, overlapping with Arima's grand tea ceremony on the 2nd and 3rd; entry is free and a tea house opens only during the leaf season.

• Anpanman Museum in Harborland 2.5 h

  A whole floor devoted to the character with the sweet-bread head, with a live show every couple of hours, a craft workshop and a toy supermarket; it is aimed at under-sixes and older children run out of things to do. Everyone pays over 2,000 yen, children from the age of one included, and the accompanying adult pays the same; the shopping arcade and bakeries on the ground floor, which sell buns shaped like the character's face, are free to enter.

• Artificial snow on the Rokko summit 3 h only 22 Nov - 31 Mar

  The ski area closest to a major Japanese city: twenty minutes up from Kobe and you are on a couple of short machine-made slopes, with a sledging area and snow play for non-skiers. It runs from late November to late March depending on the cold and will bore an experienced skier, but for children seeing snow for the first time it does the job.

• European pastry in Kobe 1 h

  A German pastry chef introduced baumkuchen to Japan here, and a local house invented the custom of giving chocolate on Valentine's Day; both are still open.

• Felissimo Chocolate Museum 1 h

  Opened in 2021 on the new waterfront, it gathers some 19,000 chocolate wrappers and boxes donated from all over the world, arranged as a history of 20th-century graphic design, plus a section on cacao and the people who grow it. On weekdays there is a free twenty-minute guided walk-through at 16:00, and the shop can be visited without paying to enter.

• Full traverse of the Rokko range 12 h

  Fifty-six kilometres from Suma beach to Takarazuka along the whole ridge, with about 3,000 metres of cumulative climb and twelve to fifteen hours of walking: the benchmark route of Kansai hillwalking, doable in a day only if you are fit and start before dawn. It splits into two or three stages using the cable cars, and there is water and vending machines at several cols, but the Suma Alps section is a relentless up-and-down that its modest altitude disguises.

• Ikuta Shrine 0.5 h

  One of Japan's oldest Shinto shrines, located right in the heart of Kobe.

• Kawasaki Good Times World museum 1.5 h

  A real shinkansen cab, motorcycles and a helicopter simulator at the company that built the first bullet train.

• Kiyomori's port and the Great Buddha of Hyogo 2.5 h

  Before Kobe existed the harbour was called Owada, and around 1173 Taira no Kiyomori had Kyogashima built in front of it, Japan's first artificial island, so Chinese ships could anchor; in 1180 he moved the imperial court here and the capital lasted half a year. What survives in the Hyogo ward is Kiyomori's burial mound and the eleven-metre bronze Great Buddha at Nofukuji temple, melted down for weapons in the war and recast in 1991. A working port district with no tourism, reached by subway or on JR's shortest railway line.

• Kobe Matsuri 3 h only the third Sunday of May

  The city's great civic festival since 1971, in mid-May, with a samba parade and floats along the main avenue.

• Kobe Oji Zoo 2.5 h

  Kobe's zoo, featuring a hands-on area with small animals ('Animals' Land') and a small amusement park.

• Kobe's pearl district 1.5 h

  Kobe processes most of Japan's cultured pearls; there are sorting and setting workshops open to visits and a small museum.

• Minatogawa Shrine 1 h

  Tomb of Kusunoki Masashige, the loyal samurai who fell here in 1336 and was turned for centuries into a national symbol of loyalty.

• Motomachi and Tor Road 2 h

  A kilometre of shopping arcade open since 1874 and the slope of boutiques and cafés running down from the district of Western houses.

• Nagata sobameshi 1 h

  Working-class dish born in the okonomiyaki-ya of the Nagata district: yakisoba noodles chopped up and fried with rice on the same griddle.

• Nankinmachi Chinatown 1 h

  A small Chinatown with dim sum stalls and street food.

• Nunobiki Falls and Herb Garden 1.5 h

  A cable car ride up to an herb garden with views over the city and the sea.

• Rokko Shidare observatory and art on the mountain 2 h

  Hiroshi Sambuichi's wooden lattice observatory, plus Rokko Meets Art, the contemporary art show spread across the mountain's gardens and buildings, which runs every year rather than every two, from late August to late November.

• Shinkaichi and the arcades under the tracks 2.5 h

  The old Taisho-era entertainment district and the passages under the tracks at Sannomiya, with vintage clothing and three-table taverns.

• Sorakuen garden 1 h

  The only feudal lord's garden the city still has, with a Western house from 1902 and the cabin of a lordly river boat moved here whole.

• Suma beach and the terrace over the sea 3 h

  The historic urban beach of Kansai, with a ropeway up the hill and a panoramic terrace reopened in 2022.

• Suma-dera and the Ichi-no-Tani battlefield 2 h

  A 9th-century temple that keeps the flute of the young Atsumori, killed in the 1184 battle that sank the Taira clan and whose setting lies all around.

• Tenjoji and the abandoned hotel on Mount Maya 1.5 h

  Tenjoji is the only temple in Japan whose main image is Maya Bunin, the Buddha's mother, and the mountain is named after her; it burned down in 1976 and was rebuilt beside the lookout, with a garden of cherries and hydrangeas. Lower down, clinging to the slope, stands the art deco shell of the 1929 mountain hotel, derelict since the 1990s: clearly visible from the ropeway, but entering is forbidden except on the guided openings held a few times a year, which sell out within hours.

• The eight-shrine pilgrimage of Ikuta 4 h

  Kobe is the only Japanese city with eight shrines numbered one to eight, all branches of Ikuta, scattered between the port and the hillside. Walking the circuit takes three to four hours and crosses neighbourhoods tourists never see, from the Sannomiya towers to the Hyogo warehouses; it is traditionally done around setsubun in early February to ward off bad luck, and several of the shrines only stamp goshuin during those days.

• Vissel Kobe and the city marathon 3 h booking

  Vissel won the league after the Iniesta period and plays in a roofed stadium; in November there is a marathon that began as thanks for the help received after the earthquake.

• Port Liner, the driverless metro 1 h

  Opened in 1981, it was the world's first fully automated driverless metro; it crosses the bay by way of an artificial island to the airport.

What only happens on specific dates

• Chinese New Year in Nankinmachi three days of Lunar New Year
• Kobe Luminarie late January to early February
• The 17 January vigil 17 Jan
• Artificial snow on the Rokko summit 22 Nov - 31 Mar
• Kobe Architecture Festival three days in early May
• Kobe Matsuri the third Sunday of May
• Five evenings of harbour fireworks five afternoons in a row in October

Ready-made routes through Kobe

Chains well with

More destinations in Kansai