Monday, October 19, 2009

Kobe Walker

Kobe Port Tower
It was Thursday in the afternoon. The wind was quite strong that day due to the typhoon. I was a bit worried if the typhoon would ruin my weekends. Fortunately, aside from the wind, everything was great. No rain, no cloud, and the sun shined brightly.

When I heard from my friends that they planned to go to Kobe in the weekends, I thought that it was a crazy thing to do. If I wanted to join, I needed to pack my things, to arrange a place for me to stay, and to buy the Shinkansen ticket as soon as possible. I needed to do everything within one day. No, I should have said within half day because I had to work on Friday. It's going to be a tough journey but I was sure that it's going to be a fun one. It's going to be a FUN one ! With that in my mind, I decided to join the fun.



IMG_3120
Next day after work, I immediately went home, grabbed my bag, and headed to Tokyo to take the next Shinkansen to Kyoto. Kobe is quite close to Kyoto. It takes around an hour to go from Kyoto to Kobe by taking the Tokaido-San-Yo Line. Since one of my friends is living in Kyoto, I felt an obligation to stay at his place. Or maybe that's just an excuse because I couldn't find another place to stay. =)

IMG_3195
I went out early in the morning to meet with my friends in Osaka. Osaka is located between Kyoto and Kobe.

IC Card
Folks who use Suica will be happy to know that they can use their Suica card in JR lines. Unfortunately, other than JR, the Suica is useless. So it's better to get Icoca card for your convenience.

IMG_3190
Our first stop was Shin-Nagata station. You can see the reason why we went there in the next photo.

Tetsujin 28
The famous 1:1 scale of Tetsujin 28! Tetsujin 28-go was the first manga to feature a giant robot. It was written and illustrated in 1956 by Mitsuteru Yokoyama. Tetsujin 28 is also known as "Gigantor" in America.

Tetsujin 28
The statue has just been completed in the beginning of October 2009. It is also one of the reasons why I decided to go to Kobe. The height is 18 meters and it is located in Wakamatsu Park. The statue will be there permanently, so you can visit it anytime you want.

Tetsujin 28
Truth to be told, I was a bit disappointed with it. The colors were not as good as I hoped. It was not as cool as what I expected. The Odaiba Gundam is way much better than Tetsujin 28. Or maybe it's because I don't have connection with Tetsujin 28 as much as I do with Gundam.

Kobe Port Tower
Next stop was the Kobe Harborland. Kobe Harborland is a really beautiful section of the city of Kobe.

Kobe Port Tower

Kobe Port Tower
The view from the port was absolutely gorgeous.

Kobe Port Tower
Danbo couldn't resist posing in the port. It's been a while since I brought him with me. Due to accident, he was hospitalized with broken arm for a while. It's good to be able to do traveling with him again. ^^

IMG_3366
Don't know what this is. It looks like you can buy the marker and write anything you want on the brick.

IMG_3367
As always, you could expect to see some cute drawings in here.

Dream Come True~
It's a dream come true for Danbo to be able to travel again.

Kobe Port Tower
The Harborland is also home to the famous Kobe Port Tower. With the height of 108 meters, this red steel tower is a famous tourists attraction.

IMG_3413
One group photo before we left the port.

China Town

China Town
The next stop was Motomachi, the China Town. The China Town was quite similar to the one in Yokohama.

Kobe Welcome Coupon
If you go to a tourist spot in Japan, I recommend you to visit the tourist information center first. Here we got the Kobe Welcome Coupon for free (after filling in the questionnaire) which give us discount for all the tourist places.

Starbuck !
Our next stop was Ijinkan. Ijinkan is a historical district in Kobe which contains a number of foreign residences from the late Meiji and early Taishō eras. You could see and enter a lot of foreign houses such as the English House, Holland House, Uroko House, Denmark House, and so on. It costs from 300 to 1000 yen per house if you want to enter it. We spotted one of the fanciest looking Starbuck there.

Ijinkan English House

Ijinkan English House
By the time we got there, it was already 4 PM. We didn't have much time left so we decided to go to the English House. Inside the English house, you can do a little bit of cosplaying. =)

Ijinkan English House
And more importantly, there was a replica of Sherlock Holmes' sitting room over there !!

Ijinkan English House
Is that Irene Adler's photo I see there ?

Ijinkan English House

Ijinkan English House
I had an urge to take that pipe. :)

Ijinkan English House
Tired from all the walking, we decided to take a rest for a while in the garden.

Ijinkan English House
No matter how tired we are, we should never let it stop us from taking a good photo.

IMG_3637
Our journey was far from over. We strolled down the street a bit to enjoy the city view.

IMG_3640

Love love love
I could smell the love in the air.

Sankaku Flower
A cute sankaku (3D) flower.

Rokko Cable Car
Our last stop was the Rokko Mountain.

Rokko Ticket
You need to take a cable car and a bus in order to go there. You could use the Kobe Welcome Coupon here.

Rokko Mountain
It was cold and the wind was strong, but the view was too amazing to be missed.

Rokko Mountain
And that's the end of my one day Kobe trip. My legs were tired from all the walking. Unfortunately, I still had some places I wanted to visit on the next day. But that will be the story for the next post. See you on the next post !

7 comments:

YuKi-To said...

amazing pics O_o

u have to pose danbo more =P

Kodomut said...

Love the book + magnifying glass shot!

Teddy said...

@Yuki-to: That's my plan ^^

Mika said...

Thanks for this post! Awesome as ever! I must say you are one of the more interesting bloggers to follow, an inspiration to all of us, I guess.

Teddy said...

@Mika: Thanks, Mika. Glad you like it. :)

rei said...

Hi,
I heard there are slopes and slopes and slopes at Ijinkan..
I'm planning to go there with my parents and i'm afraid they cant walk long.
I plan to take bus up there, so do i still need to undergo many slopes after reaching the top?
Is every houses very far from each other?

Thank you.

stenote said...

Beautiful... Keep-up the good blog... May I share an Interview with Akira Kurosawa (imaginary) http://stenote.blogspot.com/2018/04/an-interview-with-akira.html

Post a Comment

About The Man Behind This Blog

The man who loves photography and tries to capture the beauty of life through his camera.

Tweet !

Japan Blog Directory

E2046

Buy Anime Figure

Search

Partial RSS Feed

Dannychoo

Figure.fm

  All photos copyright © 2009 Teddy Herryanto

TOP