Kobe is the capital of Hyōgo Prefecture located about 30km from Osaka.  We hired a car from Osaka Kansai International Airport and drive directly there which took about 45 minutes.  For me the best thing about Kobe was the hotel we stayed in – the Hotel La Suite Kobe Harborland, which is right on the harbour and one of the best hotels we’ve stayed at anywhere in Japan. Check that out in the blog post at the bottom of this page.

If you go there and stay there by the harbour and hang around that area you might be forgiven for thinking it’s a small city, which is it by Japan or Asian standards, “only” 1.5million people but for some reason it seems way less than that.  Anyway, there’s really not a whole lot of interesting things to do in Kobe, the harbour front is nice, you can have a walk around that in the morning, go for some lunch at Kobe Harborland and have a bit of a shop and that’s about it for that area.

You can take a short 5 minute drive to the aquarium, which you can read more about in the Things To Do in Kobe section, there’s a nice park nearby but it’s bit like the rest of Kobe, a bit underwhelming.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a terrible city but I can’t think of many reasons to go there, unless like us, you’ve seen a lot of Japan and want to do or see something different.  I guess it’s proximity to Osaka makes it attractive but if you’re in Osaka and don’t have much time, I’d recommend going to Kyoto, Nara or staying in Osaka as there’s plenty of better things to do in those places over Kobe.

There’s not one single attraction that’s worth going to specifically and not enough things to do or places worth seeing to warrant a trip there, so if you’re not sure about going, I’d give it a miss because you won’t be missing too much.