Kobe Earthquake Memorial Museum

The Kobe Earthquake Memorial Museum is the undeniably the best museum I've visited in this trip to Japan. The entry fee of 600 yen (450 yen for university students) was well worth the experience.

The museum from afar. You can see the year and the time of the Kobe Earthquake written on the wall.

The entrance of the museum up close.

This museum has two buildings. The west building is about earthquakes while the east building is about the "miracle of life". I don't think the east building is particularly interesting, so I will focus on the west building.

Once you enter the museum in the west building, you will be treated with a movie of the earthquake and how it has devastated the people who were too used to the peace and were unprepared. After that, there will be a very emotional documentary played about how the earthquake has effected the people and the problems faced right after the earthquake and during recovery.

Next, on the next floor, there is a display of various artifacts from the Earthquake, together with the stories that accompanies those artifacts. Facts and other information about the Earthquake and the recovery process were also on display. Apart from the physical damage, the psychological damage was also great.

On the last floor, various experiments were provided to give viewers an idea of how devastating earthquakes can be. Finally, emergency supplies required during the time of earthquakes were on display.

Next is the east building. The exhibitions about the water and wind were so-so, but the final movie about the 2011 Tsunami and how it has affected Northern Japan was also very interesting.

What's very good about this museum is that it treats non-Japanese speakers very well. For movies, English sound is provided via headsets. All exhibitions in the west building were accompanied by English language descriptions which provides nearly as much detail as the Japanese counterpart (as opposed to some museums with very long Japanese description but very short English descriptions). However, the same cannot be said for the water and wind exhibition in the east building, which contains nearly no English at all!

Overall, if you ever visit Kobe, I highly recommend you to visit this museum. It's a very worthwhile experience and a good reminder about how cruel mother nature can be.