The port at Kobe is lovely, beautiful buildings and monuments and a hotel in the shape of a ship at the terminal. Kobe is the fifth largest city in Japan and the capital city of Hyogo Prefecture. The city is part of Keihanshin, the Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe metropolitan area and has a population of 1.5 million people. Kobe was one of the first cities to open for trade with the west and is known as a cosmopolitan port city and container port. Of course Kobe is famous for its beef but so far we haven’t seen one cow!!! Kobe was also the site of Japan’s first golf course established in 1903 and Japans first mosque built in 1935. The weather is cool and windy, around 14 C today and apparently they had a lot of rain yesterday which blew away some of the cherry blossom. However, there is still plenty to see and it’s interesting but the cherry blossom in China and South Korea was white whereas here it’s pale pink, as I remember it from our last visit.
Our tour today was Highlights of Kyoto, left the ship at 9 am and had a loooong drive in heavy traffic to the first stop at Kimkaku, (The Golden Pavilion) Rokuon-Ji Temple. This Temple is a Zen Buddhist temple and was originally the site of a villa owned by a statesman but the 3rd shogun of the Muromachi period, Yoshimitsu, took a liking to the area and acquired it in 1397. He built his own villa which he called Kitayama den. The villa functioned as an official guesthouse welcoming the Emperor Gokomatsu and other members of the nobility. Trade with China prospered during this period. After Yoshimitsu died the villa was converted into a temple and was named Rukuon-Ji. In 1994 it was registered as a World Cultural Heritage Site. It burned down in recent times, though to have been caused by a monk, and was rebuilt 60 years ago. It is absolutely beautiful.
From there we drove to a restaurant for lunch. This was typical Japanese, shoes off at the door and slippers worn in the room. The food was delicious with a bit of everything you could imagine!
Following that we went on to the Nijo-Jo Castle which is also a World Heritage site. I chose not to go into the castle, instead walked around the perimeter and took some lovely photos. To be honest, I’m just about done with temples & castles but in a country like Japan with such history it’s impossible to ignore them and it would have been so much more interesting knowing the history. Back at the ship now, resting the legs before an Asian buffet tonight. We don’t leave until 3 pm tomorrow so some people have stayed in town to have dinner.
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