Last Wednesday Neil and myself went to Sannomiya in Kobe as he wanted to try and find a bag to buy. We wandered round the city for a while, when we found a department store with eight or so levels. As we ascended escalator after escalator we noticed a sign that said on the top floor was an “English garden”. Truly intrigued we kept going.
Apparently, this is an English Garden. On top of a building. Lack of actual garden aside, the view was amazing.
(Click on photos at the top for more views. Consider this a highlight reel.)
After taking in the view of Kobe from the top of a building, we wandered around for a while longer. We saw lots of shops, but didn’t find a bag for Neil, though he did find a few he might like.
After we were done shopping, we decided to go to Shin Kobe to take a ride on the gondola (Or cable car, or ropeway, depending on where you live in the world). We found it after a little bit of wandering. It cost 1,000 yen return ($10NZD), which was reasonable. We could have gone one way, but walking back down was a long way.
On the way up we got awesome views of the city. This is all Kobe, as it stretches around the harbour it eventually turns into Osaka. You really don’t get a sense of the scale when you’re on the ground.
At the top of the gondola was a large building, with lots of gardens. We had also passed over a number of gardens on the way up.
 
And of course, you can’t have gardens without gardeners.
And here’s the buildings at the top.
Unfortunately the weather got worse the longer we stayed at the top, so most of the photos I took had poor visibility. Luckily there was a picture there showing what it should have looked like.
you didn’t answer my question about the earthquake
awesome photos it looks like an amazing place