rokko island

is this man-made island in kobe, and is home to the kobe fashion museum and artist museum. the island was built as a self-contained new town i think, and it REALLY looks like singapore. check these out:

looks exactly like HDB!

and you get the MRT-like Rokko Liner monorail lines:

it appears to be exactly like one of the new towns in singapore, like senkang or punggol, complete with young couples and small kids! it was very very weird.

the island has water bodies around the station in which many children were swimming and frolicking:

the island’s website claimed that there’s lots of shopping to do, but it lied. the shopping was extremely disappointing, and the “highlight” of the island has to be the fashion museum. it’s not a bad museum, although i’m not sure if it’s worth the 500yen entrance fee. it’s pretty small, although you do get to see some really beautiful kimono and french court costumes. they were having a promotion though, and we got in free! :)

its design is very eyecatching:

the artist museum is in the same building too, and i’m not sure how much the entrance fee is, as we got in free as well. there are only 3 smallish galleries in the museum though, so i’m quite sure it’s not very worth the money! however, we managed to discover that there is a fair number of art pieces installed in various places on the island, and went to check out 2 that looked nice and were near:

the men are playing musical instruments, while the woman is probably the vocalist.

my hair was messy, and the weather was unbearably hot that day.

dont you think her face looks rather freaky?

the other one was this:

the kitty looked really cute in the picture we saw of it in the museum, but didnt seem as cute in reality:

the paper bag, though, was amazingly lifelike. the dirt that accumulated on the piece added to its realism too!

and the little girl was just extremely freaky:

 

we of course had tea too:

the cafe was quite nice and was located at sumiyoshi station, which is connected to the rokko liner. they were actually playing genuine records in the store, although we couldnt really tell the difference in audio quality :P