Motomachi Shopping District

Motomachi is Kobe's old-town shopping district, a covered arcade stretching for about one kilometre south of Motomachi station. Unlike the glossier shopping centres of Sannomiya to the east, Motomachi has retained a mix of traditional shops — watch repairers, shoe cobblers, small antique dealers, old-fashioned confectionery shops — alongside cafes and restaurants. It is less tourist-oriented than Nankin-machi nearby and more representative of everyday Kobe.

The arcade connects northward to Motomachi station and southward to the edge of Nankin-machi (Chinatown). Walking through it gives a better sense of the city's commercial character than the brand-dominated malls of Harborland.

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A story
Motomachi — "original town" — is the oldest surviving commercial district in Kobe, the successor to the markets that grew up around the port in the Meiji era. It sits immediately south of the Hankyu and JR Motomachi stations and extends under a long covered arcade that has been in continuous commercial use since the early 1900s. The arcade survived the 1995 earthquake — the steel structure bent but did not collapse — and has been a Kobe landmark since.

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