Kobe Animal Kingdom, formerly known as Kobe Kachoen, is a flower and animal park located in Port Island of Kobe city. You can enjoy it during any season and all types of weather, as it is an indoor park with different flowers, rare animals, and birds from all over the world. It is not your ordinary zoo as you can watch birds walking free and feed them with special food, feed penguins with fish, watch an Owl & Hawk show, take a photo with a bird sitting on your hand, and drink coffee among the flower beds.
I visited Kobe Animal Kingdom in 2013, and spent six hours of my time there and found it really stunning. My first impression was from a huge pond full of water lilies of all sorts and colors. It was really spectacular!
Next, there were about ten areas with different surprises. I particularly liked the area with many toucans as I saw those birds live for the first time. I took a photo with one of them, sitting on my hand. I was surprised that the food for toucans was some liquid in a small pot and a toucan could get it with its big beak!
Watching children taking photos with birds was a fun as kids were shy or scared but encouraged to take photos. The most fussy and funny was feeding penguins with fish as penguins jumped out of water to catch fish and splashed water. Then I was really impressed with the Owl & Hawk show as the birds obeyed the girls’ commands and performed all kinds of flights, only a few inches above people’s heads. No need to say they received applauses, but the big hit was the talking parrot!
The large area with flowers hung looked like paradise and accommodated a cafe and a flower exhibition. The coffee and a cake sold there were very delicious!
Kobe Animal Kingdom is very popular to visit by families with kids. To get there from Sannomiya Station, one must take Port Liner to Kei Computer Mae Station.
