Kobe, Japan is an interesting city.
If you would drop me there without telling me where I was and no local signs or people walking around I would guess that I was in a place like London or Chicago – most definitely not Japan.
Hello Kitty and Cartoon figures are all but missing and replaced with upscale dining (mostly French and Italian), expensive stores (Dior, DG, etc), and English is almost always in a larger font than the comparable Kanji text for most big businesses.
It is so eerie and cosmopolitan that I caught myself on multiple occasions wondering if I was even in Japan anymore.
There are really only three things that I could see coming to Kobe for.
The first is the most obvious, to live there. Kobe constantly ranks the top city in Japan for expat living and there is no doubt of that after seeing the city. For me, all the french restaurants and pastry shops (mostly the latter) have me wanting to move there already as well.
The second is as an entry and exit point into Japan via the nearby port of Kobe which has weekly ferries to and from Shanghai and Busan (I later took the ferry from Osaka to Shanghai, instead).
Since I am not able to be classified in the previous two, the reason I went to Kobe falls into category number 3: Kobe Beef.
