🦜 Kobe Animal Kingdom: A Detailed Guide to a Must-Visit in Kansai

Visiting Kansai? Make sure to stop by Kobe Animal Kingdom! It's a different experience from typical Chinese zoos, offering fun for both adults and children. Interact with all kinds of small animals, watch your step for birds underfoot, be cautious of squirrels and kangaroos that might dart out when you open a door, and look up to see red pandas and ring-tailed lemurs swinging above you. ⚠️ Kobe has two zoos: Kobe Animal Kingdom and Kobe Oji Zoo. The recommendation is for Kobe Animal Kingdom—don't get them mixed up. 1️⃣ Operating Hours: 10:00-17:00, closed on Thursdays 2️⃣ Transportation and Discount Packages: From Kobe Sannomiya Station, head towards Kobe Airport on the Port Liner and get off at the Computer Science Center Station. You can buy tickets on-site at Kobe Animal Kingdom, ❗️or get a discount package at the 2nd floor of Sannomiya Station next to the Kobe Airport entrance, which effectively covers the round-trip train fare. See Figure 2 for the entrance, Figure 3 for where to buy the package inside the door, which includes the small train ticket shown in Figure 4. Insert the ticket at the station entrance as you would with a subway ticket in China. 3️⃣ Park Area: After exiting the subway, the small houses shown in Figures 5 and 6 mark the entrance to Kobe Animal Kingdom. Ticket prices are shown in Figure 7. 4️⃣ Park Layout and Show Times: See Figures 8 and 9. Most animals roam freely, divided into indoor and outdoor areas. Indoors, don't miss big bill and the capybara; they're and open for petting. Outdoors, must-sees are the kangaroos and sika deer; the crowd favorites are also open for petting, with kangaroos offering the best texture, haha. ⚠️ Not Recommended: The squirrels are in a separate small room where you need to queue to enter and exit. It's quite crowded, so if you're short on time, it's skippable—no surprises here. The bird area's show. It's just four pelicans flying back and forth over a short waterway, which wouldn't count as a show in China. 5️⃣ Dining 🍴: We spotted two dining areas, one in the center next to the shopping area with a wide selection and correspondingly long queues. The other is near the entrance/exit, with just one food stall. Though the options are limited, it's less crowded, and the queues are shorter. We ate here, ordering a udon noodle set that Mrs. Gu quite enjoyed. 6️⃣ Shopping 🛍️: Purchased three types of animal-packed biscuits, all delicious! A sloth square box, a little penguin cylindrical box, and a capybara pattern square box—none were duds, cute and tasty! #OffTheBeatenPath #ChallengeToMakeFriendsWithSmallAnimals #Kobe #Travel #Japan #KansaiTravel #JapanTravel #Zoo #Osaka #FamilyFun #FamilyTravel #WhereToGoForFamilyTravel