As long as we’re taking family vacations with young kids, the itinerary still needs to be filled with activities that will appeal and engage them. As lovely as the scenery was at the Philosopher’s Walk or Ubi Prefecture Park, our older girl now at thirteen seemed to be somewhat disengaged – though Peter thankfully by virtue of his innate curiosity always finds something interesting to check out on his own no matter where we go.
The first child-oriented activity this trip was yesterday at Day 02 – Nara Deer Park. The second was Kobe Animal Kingdom: a small zoo situated in Kobe that has something most of the other zoos we’ve visited doesn’t have, or at least not to this degree: several contact areas where humans can get up very close and personal with numerous very docile animals. The experience isn’t finally too different from e.g. cat cafes or a petting zoo – but the animals here are really well taken care of and groomed, extremely cute and child-friendly, or at least tolerant of human contact!
The small zoo is reached by taking the train to Sanomiya Station, then taking a Port Liner light rail ride for another 10 minutes. Be careful though: the rail track here splits somewhere towards the end. We got on the wrong train, and had to alight a good 25 minute walk away from the venue. It was a scenic-enough walk though on good pavements, and in very cool weather – so all good after all.
One of the key areas is a contact area with several feline and canine types. You’d need to reserve a time slot, so you’ll want to do so as soon as you’ve gained entrance. The slots are ten minutes: which is just about enough for one to enjoy the super-cute factor with the very lovely animals.
And oh yes; there’s also a fish spa area where you can pay a small fee of ¥300 for you to dip your feet into a small pool and its fishy inhabitants to nibble the dead skin off your feet. The wife and two kids went for it, and all said it was super ticklish and needed getting used to!
In all, the kids loved the park, despite its fairly small size and few number of animal exhibits, we spent two hours in the zoo.
