First is the main entrance door (recently reconstructed). Notice the panda vending machine in the left lower corner – reminds that I must make an “interesting Japanese vending machines” post one day:

Kobe’s China Town is actually one long street with a main square in the middle. It extends and in some of the small adjacent streets but not too much. The people come here mainly for the Chinese dumplings and you  can see always big queues in front of some of the dumpling shops (and never in form of the others). Our favorite shop is the fresh fruits one. It is a sort of tradition for us to stop and buy fresh pieces of pineapple, watermelon or strawberries every time we visit the China town.

Almost inside China Town (notice the vapors coming from the shops – this are mainly Chinese dumplings cooked in front of you (not my favorite though – I am just not a dumpling person (I guess))):

More random shots from the main street in China Town

And now all of the above pictures in motion:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The red Chinese lanterns are everywhere so they do deserve a separate pictures. They look a little bit like giant flying jellyfishes:

Here we reach the main attraction – the Chinese Pavilion on the main Square with its Christmas decoration.

The stone guardians of the pavilion look very serious:

Just two more shots of the pavilion.

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Here is the second video from the square:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Did you notice the red paprika around the main figures. I thought it’s real but a shot with flash revealed all the truth (do not watch if you have red color issues:)):

My wife (who recently came back from Warsaw, Poland) claims that this year Kobe Christmas decoration is not so beautiful as previous years. I don’t know – may be she is right and some places definitely look with scaled down decoration (in comparison with previous years). But at least we have China Town and the Christmas spirit is there seems quite alive :)

On the place of the building area used to be a football playground but sorry guys – no football any more (the tennis courts though were successfully translated a hundred meters to the west).