One day in February, with the weather warming up a bit, I took a quick trip to Kobe. Strolling through cute, stylish streets and indulging in sweets would surely blow away all the stress piled up from overwork. I arrived at Shin-Kobe Station in the morning on the shinkansen, and after mulling over where to go, I decided to do a loop following the most standard course recommended by the Kobe tourist information center. The order goes: Shin-Kobe Station -> Ijinkan streets -> Kitano Hotel -> Sannomiya -> Nankinmachi (Chinatown) -> Meriken Park + Kobe Port + Mosaic -> Sannomiya -> Shin-Kobe Station. It’s a plan for covering central Kobe thoroughly in a single day.
The first stop, the Ijinkan streets, is a set of houses where foreigners lived back in the days when the port opened, renovated and turned into tourist attractions. To be honest.. the admission fees are pretty steep and there isn’t all that much to see.. But the Kitano Hotel, Kobe’s holy ground of fine dining, sits at the end of this road, so I decided to drop by on the way.
A walking path with a view of the port
Local ladies and gentlemen are out walking their dogs. There’s some smog, but the weather’s not bad. I catch myself thinking how nice it would be to live in a place like this..
Follow this road all the way down and you reach the Ijinkan.
I did make it to the Ijinkan hill road.. but for someone like me, eating matters a lot more than sightseeing ^_^ I came with no reservations and no plans at all, so I hurried past the Ijinkan for now and headed to the Kitano Hotel first to book lunch.
The Kitano Hotel’s dessert shop
Right in front of the hotel is Igrek Plus, a dessert specialist that also has a branch in the Shin-Marunouchi Building in Tokyo. I remember loving the bread at the Tokyo branch so much that I went back again and again. Igrek Plus has branches all over the city, so there’s no need to come all the way up here just for the desserts.
The Kitano Hotel’s main entrance
The Kitano Hotel is famous for its catchphrase of serving “the world’s best breakfast.” (That breakfast apparently cost 5,000 yen..) So I thought about having both breakfast and lunch ^_^ but sadly breakfast time was already over. Next time I’d like to stay at this hotel and take my time enjoying the breakfast.
Inside, the hotel looks a little cramped, but the interior is old-fashioned and refined, the kind of place Showa-era aristocrats might have frequented. You can sort of feel its past glory. When I went to the front desk to check on restaurant reservations, a beautiful hotel staffer who looked half-Japanese helped me very kindly. The French restaurant aʃ (Ash) had a wedding booked during the day so no reservations, but Igrek had one table left at the earliest slot – an hour later. What a relief. For an impulsive, spur-of-the-moment, completely unplanned trip, I’d say it’s gone pretty well.
The hotel from outside
It struck me as a very Kobe kind of place..
With nothing to do for an hour ^_^ I wander around the neighborhood. It feels like the perfect schedule for a traveler.
A house gone to ruin
The blue sky and the ruins gave off a vibe straight out of Laputa.
The main street of the Ijinkan area
There can’t be all that much to see around here, but there were quite a few tourists. I guess everyone comes all the way to Kobe and then has nothing much to do..
Igrek’s café
A lovely café with rows and rows of delicious-looking cakes. It wasn’t far from the hotel.
H.R. Higgins, a tea specialist
They brag about supplying the British royal family.. With maid and butler stuff being all the rage these days, I figure places like this must be getting some attention of their own. (Or maybe not..)
The mosque
It’s a street packed with exotic culture. But the admission fees are steep..(usually around 700 yen) so for the most part I just looked at the buildings from outside. My reservation time wasn’t far off anyway… While wandering around, I found one curious place and paid to go in. More on that in the next post..