One of my new favorite weekend activities is to ride around the city on my mountain bike. When we moved we debated bringing them, but I am sure glad that we did. The past few weekends I have been meeting up with a friend of mine and heading into Kobe. It is a great way to see the city - you can access many more areas than you can by car and you can cover much more ground than on foot. Our strategy so far has just been to cross the bridge into town, pick a direction, and go. We pay special attention to take all the cool side streets and back alleys.
This is such an interesting city. I could spend hours just exploring with my bike and my camera. We also get a pretty good workout, as I mentioned before the city is built on the side of a mountain. On the way out we get great exercise since we are doing a lot of climbing. They way home is mostly downhill and much more relaxing. We have been doing about 15 miles each time we go out.
There are all kinds of hidden gems in the city. A couple of my favorites have been some very cool shrines that we have found. The attached pictures are from one shrine we found tucked away in a little hillside neighborhood. It is called the Gokoku Shrine. It was built to honor the local citizens who have lost their lives while serving their country in the military.
